Me, Myself & Irene
by Sasha Stone

The Farrelly Brothers have made some good movies - Me, Myself & Irene is not one of them. Usually, your heart breaks for their protagonists, even throughout the gross-out humor, which makes you laugh so hard because it's juxtaposed with scenes of such sincerity. Think of Jeff Daniels being given the diuretic in Dumb and Dumber on his oh-so-important date with Lauren Holly, or Ben Stiller's prom fiasco in There's Something About Mary. Your heart can't break for the characters in Irene. It's too busy calming the stomach.

While their films consistently aim at the 12 year-old boy demo, Irene takes it to a lower level entirely, right between the legs, as a matter of fact. How much you can take depends upon how much you laugh at.

Jim Carrey plays the well-meaning Charlie, a chump who becomes the town joke when his wife gives birth to half-black triplets, proving her affair with the black limo driver (a dwarf who is the president of MENSA). Charlie holds in his anger, however, even as his wife runs off with the limo driver ("he's my soul mate"), leaving him to raise the three kids on his own.

Charlie finally snaps when a woman asks if she can move ahead of him in the grocery line, pulling up her two full carts. Carrey then does some hilarious face shifting to become "Hank," a Dirty Harry-esque alter ego, launching immediately into a riff about the mother's apparent yeast infection. A bizarre (and unfortunately unforgettable) scene follows, with Carrey nudging out an infant so he can nurse from another woman's breast. If this scene doesn't make you want to jump out of your skin, sit tight, there are plenty more to come.

Hank is stuffed back inside when Charlie is treated for a personality disorder "with narcissistic rage," and given medication just in time to meet his love interest, Irene (a surprisingly waif-like Renee Zellweger). Irene is being set up for a crime she didn't commit (jealous boyfriend in high places) and must be escorted back to New York on a warrant. Naturally, Charlie is just the one to do the job, on a motorcycle, no less.

What follows is a somewhat confusing plot involving the EPA, the feds, the bad guys, a dildo, and a romance, all swirling around Charlie/Hank and Irene. The plot is secondary to the set pieces, which are usually what people take away from the Farrellys' films. Here, both the set pieces and the plot seem to be in the way of a better movie that is perhaps still on the cutting room floor. While there is one memorable fight scene between Charlie's conflicting personalities, Irene is distinctly lacking in those bellyaching laughs. While Carrey is marvelous at physical morphing, his heart seems elsewhere (with Zellweger perhaps).

Watching Me, Myself & Irene is like being transported back to high school, where you had to laugh at the guy who verbally tortured the blind girl, or the overweight boy, or else be outed as a square. Okay, so it's not so funny anymore, guys. Time for something new.

CineScene, 2000