At the Denver Center Garner Galleria, Hold On To Your Butts lampoons Jurassic Park.

Dumb and Dumber, were it not already taken, wouldn’t be a bad alternative title to Hold On To Your Butts, now playing at the Denver Center’s Garner Galleria Theatre. The juvenile spoof of the first Jurassic Park film aims low and stays there for its mercifully brief one-hour runtime.

But that doesn’t mean you won’t get plenty of cheap laughs along the way — particularly (and importantly) if you’ve seen the source material a number of times or, better yet, seen it recently.

Inspired by a line from Samuel L. Jackson’s character Ray when he reboots the dinosaur park’s operating system in the film, Hold On To Your Butts features Jay Dunn and Natalie Rich blazing through each scene of the film. They’re accompanied by Foley artist Kelly Robinson, supplying a dizzying array of sound effects, mostly centered on farting, chirping and screeching noises.

Dunn and Rich do a nice job swerving from one character to the next while also employing clever stand-ins when they need to depict multiple characters. Rich might portray paleontologist Alan Grant one moment, sporting the signature aviators Sam Neill wore in the film, then whip them off and hold them next to her as she switches to Ellie, the paleobotanist played by Laura Dern in the original. Moving to Jeff Goldblum’s smug mathematician character Ian Malcolm is easily done with some tinted, narrow sunglasses. And Dunn and Rich are both quite good at mimicking his halting phrases and didactic pronouncements.

The actors are accompanied by a Foley artist to supply sound effects. | Photo: Jacob Hiss

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Know thy source

As is the case with spoofs of any kind, ignorance of the source material can be a killer. Laughs garnered from plot holes, character quirks and the like won’t land anywhere close to your humor runway. If you don’t have an image in your mind of the jiggling cigarette that’s always present in Ray’s mouth when he speaks, the increasing number of fake cigs in Rich’s mouth as the show progresses will leave you flat. Likewise, the importance of a can of Barbasol shaving cream to the plot won’t mean anything.

Both sporting kneepads, Dunn and Rich are skilled physical comedians who clearly are having a lot of fun zipping through this one. Director Kristin McCarthy Parker uses a trunk full of gimmicks and props to effectively translate an FX-heavy film to a low-budget stage. Need a T.rex tail? Just strap a highway cone to your butt. Does the scene call for a helicopter? Just grab an umbrella and give it a few good spins.

Although my seatmate was unimpressed with the whole thing (OK, he hated it), the crowd at the show I saw Sept. 18 appeared wholly on board with the shenanigans onstage. On the way out, I heard one couple chatting about how great they thought it was while another headed to the merch table for a “Spared No Expense” ball cap.

You may well lose a few brain cells along the way, but if you can set your intellect aside and embrace the idiocy of Hold On To Your Butts, you may find yourself laughing out loud despite yourself.