How much you enjoy this slipshod comedy relies on how much you love the manic Mr. Carrey. Me, Myself & Irene is entirely his movie, beginning to end, top to bottom. While this is not necessarily a terrible thing, it escapes being great simply because nobody else is allowed to be funny!
The Farrelly brothers (Kingpin and There's Something About Mary) have made themselves millionaires by becoming the modern kings of 'gross-out' comedy. As they've proven in the earlier movies, they know how to combine shock and disgust to hilarious results, But for the latest movie, less may have been more. When your your finished product looks like a string of unrelated comedy scenes, it may still be funny, but that doesn't make it a good movie. If I were asked to describe Me, Myself & Irene in one word, that word would be 'gross'. Unfortunately, that word should have been 'hysterical'.
Nice-guy policeman Charlie has been walked on his whole life. His young wife leaves him for a midget limo driver. The fact that Charlie never seems to notice that his sons are black makes for the best laughs in the movie. Sadly, the Farrellys have dozens more gags to get through, so the better jokes are generally left behind after the first twenty minutes. After taking just a bit too much abuse from the townspeople, Charlie suddenly develops an alter-ego named Hank, who is as crude, violent and basically obnoxious.
Through a predictable chain of lazy plot contrivances, Charlie must chaperone the beautiful Irene to a police station out of state, where she faces some nasty charges. This sets off a string of plot turns that A) have little to do with the plot and B) don't feature Carrey onscreen, and therefore apparently don't seem to warrant any good gags. Simply put, there's just no reason why a slapstick comedy like this has to be so darn plot-heavy.
I consider myself a big fan of Jim Carrey. There's really no debating the physical comic gifts this guy has. But Jim gets complete freedom to do anything he wants here, while the directors are evidently under the assumption that 'gross' or always equals 'funny'. While I could easily recommend this movie to hardcore Carrey fans, those looking for a well-crafted comedy should look elsewhere.
For example: Try to make sense of the scene in which Carrey finds a cow lying in the road. Did someone actually script this scene? "Carrey inserts fingers into cow's nostrils and then shoots him in the head 6 times." I'm not saying it's too dumb or silly. I'm just saying it's not really funny. For every sincerely funny scene of Carrey's bodily contortions, there are three scenes that just fly by unnoticed.
Me, Myself & Irene features a terrible running narration throughout that makes the sloppy editing and rambling plot all the more evident. Consequently, the movie seems to run on way too long, and everything grinds to a dead halt whenever Carrey isn't on the screen.
While I'm all for performers and filmmakers stretching the bounds of good taste, perhaps someone (I nominate Steve Martin) needs to help Jim channel his mammoth talents instead of just pointing a camera at him and saying "Be Silly!" Me, Myself & Irene possesses a handful of real belly laughs, and I can recommend the movie on those alone, but the movie as a whole is a threadbare, lightweight and disposable disappointment.
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