Took A Level In Dumbass / Live-Action Films

aka: Film

• Steve Stifler is considerably more clueless and socially inept in American Wedding than he is in the other American Pie films.
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 has Rocket portrayed as thinking a battle is the right time to play music, not knowing which eye to blink with, and not being able to tell when Peter is being sarcastic or insulting him by calling him Trash. Plus he steals from his employers and expects to get away with it.
• In Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, while Marv was never the brightest bulb, he is a lot dumber than in the first film, possibly thanks to the head injuries he sustained in the first film (and/or additional head injuries he might have sustained in prison).
• Idiocracy: This trope happening to the entire human race is basically the plot.
• The Mask has both a film-wise and adaptation wise example for Lt. Kellaway's partner, Det. Doyle. In his initial scene at the bank, Doyle seems to be quite intelligent. By the time we see him at the park, he's suddenly a ditz and by the film's end he's a certified idiot (though some of that may have been him being influenced by the Mask's power). The cartoon made him even dumber.
• National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie's Island Adventure makes Cousin Eddie even dumber than he was in the previous National Lampoon's Vacation movies. In his first scene, he's losing a game of Tic-Tac-Toe against a monkey.
• The Neverending Story III Escape From Fantasia: Falkor, who is supposed to be a very smart character. He is a smart character in the first film and still somewhat smart in the second. In the third, however, he becomes a downright moron.
  • Not to mention the Rock Biter...
• Nutty Professor II: The Klumps: Played for Drama. Sherman, in a desperate attempt to remove Buddy's consciousness from his body, removes his DNA. But in the process, Sherman triggers a breakdown of his brain cells. Soon he can't articulate, teach his class, and acts like a bumbler. Facing memory loss, Sherman breaks up with his fiancée, not wanting to burden her. By the end of the movie, he is almost totally brain-dead, and would have stayed that way if not for being able to absorb Buddy's DNA.
• In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Marcus Brody was portrayed as a highly intelligent, very serious character. When he shows up again in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade he initially starts off the same but then becomes progressively dumber and more incompetent load who couldn't even initially tell that he was being kidnapped... even as Sallah was screaming at him that the bad guys were doing exactly that. One could chalk it up to him being a Fish out of Water when he's suddenly thrust into a globe-trotting adventure, if not for Indy explaining to Jones Sr. that Marcus is apparently such a doddering goofball that he once got lost in his own museum.
• Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau from The Pink Panther. In the first film, his lesser screentime doesn't make him look nearly as clumsy as he later turns out to be. It wasn't really until his second film, A Shot in the Dark, that he became the bumbling detective that we all know and love. Surprisingly, his animated counterpart gets things done right slightly more often, although he makes up for it by having a lower success rate for solving crimes and by getting way more blows along the way.

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