We're all tired of hearing it, but Queen Elsa is right. "The past is in the past. Let. It. Go."

She was singing about freezing stuff, but I'm talking about leaving popular-but-dormant entertainment alone. Recreating the magic of something beloved is actually more difficult than creating something newly beloved.

The most recent case-in-point: "Dumb and Dumber To," last year's sequel to the 1994 comedy hit starring Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels. The new film, now available on home video, qualifies as one of the worst sequels of all time. Yes, even worse than the 2003 prequel, "Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd."

The movie simply isn't funny, not even by the loosest standards. In addition to being dumber, Harry and Lloyd are meaner, cruder and utterly insufferable to watch for more than a few minutes.

Making matters worse, "Dumb and Dumber To" purposefully references and repeats the gags people loved from the first movie, occasionally trying to one-up the joke with something sillier, or often more disgusting. You loved that bit about the most annoying sound in the world? Well, here's the second most annoying sound in the world. You liked that part about the blind kid's dead bird? Here's 100 dead birds.

This tendency to rehash and outdo beloved moments is as rampant as it is wrong-headed. We love the original beats because they came organically from the discovery of something new. If we want to re-experience them, the original content is readily available.

"Dumb and Dumber To" even makes the mistake of showing favorite moments from the first film alongside new content as the final credits roll. The immediate visual comparison only amplifies the disparity between the two.

Sequels in general tend to have this problem. Audiences loved the news team street battle in "Anchorman," so "Anchorman 2" stages an even bigger, star-studded brawl to serve as the film's bloated climax. In "Jurassic Park," a T-Rex pushes a car over a cliff, so in "The Lost World," two T-Rexes push an RV over an even bigger cliff.

As often as bigger proves to be lesser, there's the other troubling trend of same-but-different. Think of how "Star Trek: Into Darkness" uses Khan and the death of a major character in a way that puts a spin on the classic resolution to "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan." The reference is both too on the nose and disrespectful to the original content. Then, almost as if the filmmakers realized it too late, the movie basically undoes the wreckage without proper explanation or resolution.

J.J. Abrams' approach to the end of "Star Trek: Into Darkness" should be of concern to how he goes about continuing the "Star Wars" saga in December's "The Force Awakens." My hope is he learned from the "Trek" backlash and won't populate the film with modernized shadows of what made the original trilogy so great. As much as we all think we want to see the old man versions of Han Solo and Luke Skywalker, just remember how the world reacted to Indiana Jones surviving that nuclear blast in "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."

The best way is to carve a new path, even if you must use the franchise's name as a selling point. I was encouraged to see the "Ghostbusters" reboot abandon all reference to the original films and cast four female comedians in the title roles. Whether or not you like the cast, it's a smart way of sidestepping the inevitable comparisons.

Then, of course, the studio had to mention they had an all-male "Ghostbusters" reboot in the works too, and that even Dan Aykroyd's "Ghostbusters III" idea was still on the table. Perhaps they should take the fact Bill Murray repeatedly said no to it as a sign that it probably shouldn't happen. Murray said yes to two "Garfield" movies, and even has a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo in "Dumb and Dumber To." The "Ghostbusters III" script must be just awful.

"Dumb and Dumber To" is guilty of one more thing: Being a sequel that nobody's wanted for more than a decade. The window for a sequel closed somewhere around Y2K, and it's only because of Carrey's decline in popularity we have to endure it now.

When will Hollywood learn? "Dumb and Dumber To" underperformed at the box office, and "Hot Tub Time Machine 2" bombed hard last month, so maybe, just maybe...

Oh, "Zoolander 2" comes out next February.

Tyler Wilson can be reached at [email protected].