Me, Myself & Irene
**1/2
Rated on a 4-star
scale
Screening venue: Warner Village (Birkenhead Conway Park)
Released in the UK by Fox on September 22, 2000; certificate 15; 116 minutes;
country of origin USA; aspect ratio 1.85:1
Directed by Bobby Farrelly, Peter
Farrelly; produced by Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly,
Bradley Thomas.
Written by Mike Cerrone, Bobby Farrelly, Peter
Farrelly.
Photographed by Mark Irwin; edited by Christopher
Greenbury.
CAST.....
Jim Carrey..... Charlie/Hank
Renee Zellweger..... Irene
Chris Cooper..... Lieutenant Gerke
Robert Forster..... Colonel Partington
Richard Jenkins..... Agent Boshane
Rob Moran..... Trooper Finneran
Traylor Howard..... Layla
Tony Cox..... Limo Driver
It was with great anticipation that I went to
see the Foo Fighters as this year's Leeds Festival. And their playing was
fine, I guess. But something about the arrangement of their set just didn't
work. I ended up going back to my tent halfway through. It is a strange
coincidence that the band's latest song was written for "Me, Myself
& Irene", the new film by those exciting comic directors Bobby
and Peter Farrelly, which hits a lot of right notes but somehow never takes
off.
Jim Carrey stars as Charlie, a Rhode Island cop
whose wife left him 18 years ago for a black dwarf, after giving birth to
the guy's three children and leaving them for Charlie to raise. The triplets
have grown up watching Richard Pryor on television, reading big textbooks
and eating a lot; now they're heavy-set geniuses who use the MF-word a
lot.
Charlie loves these kids as his own, bottling
up the humiliation of being deserted and having to rear another man's offspring.
Neighbours see him as a pushover -- the guy next door steals his paper and
lets his dog defecate on his lawn; people with illegally parked cars ask
him to move them; housewives push in front of him at the supermarket checkout.
But he doesn't react, he just bottles it up, bottles it up, bottles it
up...
The psychological effect of all this pent-up emotion
is that Charlie develops a split personality named Hank -- a brawling, smoking,
swearing incarnation who doesn't take any crap. Due to plot developments
far too complicated and irrelevant to follow, Charlie finds himself on the
run with a girl named Irene (Renee Zellweger) who is being chased by gangsters
and crooked cops -- and it's a pretty hard process, trying to help her out,
when he keeps turning into someone else.
Carrey does a fair job with his role, making Charlie
into an exaggeratedly sluggish dweeb, then leering, swaggering and putting
on a raspy tough-guy voice when the Hank personality emerges. Farrelly movies
don't go for subtle humour, and Carrey doesn't bother with a delicate
performance; he turns a psychotic disorder into an excuse for hyperactivity,
and it's amusing. There are mental health activists condemning "Me, Myself
& Irene" for irresponsible portrayal of a disorder, but to take it that
seriously is a mistake. Besides, for all their faults, Charlie and Hank are
still pretty likeable guys.
The problem with "Me, Myself & Irene" is that
too much of it is quiet dialogue -- it's essentially a road movie whereby
Carrey talks a lot of trash and the Zellweger character sits listening. There's
amusing material within this, but where are the big gags? The Farrellys are
no good at calm humour; they're at their best when producing manic, distasteful
set pieces. The few scenes in the film that approach such a flavour (Hank
destroying a car in a disabled spot, then realising it does belong to a disabled
person; Charlie finding a giant spider crawling over him, and jumping around
frantically trying to shake it off) are mere side moments, taking place under
musical montages which dull their effect. There are nice touches of vulgarity
throughout -- this is the kind of film in which a chicken's head finds its
way up a patrolman's backside, and a cow manages to survive six gunshots
to the head -- but they're lacking in energy. I wanted to see this movie
go wild, and it never did.
The Farrelly Brothers have made funnier flicks
before, and no doubt will in future. "There's Something About Mary" (1998)
was generally boring, but its key scenes left me gasping. "Kingpin" (1996)
remains one of the most breathtaking pieces of cinematic indecency in recent
memory. In "Me, Myself & Irene" the jokes are no more mature but for
some reason they've been delivered in a more sedated manner. It's kinda like
an omelette without salt, pepper or toast -- you can finish it, and it doesn't
leave you looking for another portion, but it's oddly bland and unsatisfying,
and afterwards you wish there'd been more to it.
COPYRIGHT©
2000 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
2000 Reviews
(alphabetical)
2000 Reviews (by star
rating)
Archive of all cinema reviews
(alphabetical)
Review Archive
Index
UK
Critic main page
|
![[Image]](http://www.ukcritic.com/posbanr2.gif)