Me, Myself, and Irene (2000)

Review:

“Me, Myself, and Irene” (2000) is a bitter attempt to put the ol’ comic spin on ‘Doctor Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde.” Unfortunately, while not necessarily having a bad premise, “Me, Myself and Irene” descends into that realm of shocking jokes that shock for the sake of being shocking and ultimately wind up being not that shocking at all. When, in the first twenty minutes of the film there is a shot of Jim Carrie relieving his bowels on a neighbors lawn and a cut away to chocolate soft serve ice cream, well, not much else is going to phase you in a film.

Jim Carrie plays Charlie, an outlandishly nice state police officer from Rhode Island. Due to his incessant niceness, everyone in his community abuses and uses poor Charlie, including his wife who leaves him for a black midget limousine driver. This leaves Charlie with a lot of pent up rage and three black children to raise. As these things tend to go, Charlie snaps and unleashes his alter ego Hank who is a ripe bastard and terrorizes the town and everyone he meets. The first few scenes with Hank probably merit the biggest laughs of the entire picture.

Eventually, Irene (Renee Zellweger) comes to town and must be transported back to New York State to be arrested and of course, Charlie/Hank is given the task of escorting her upstate. As you can probably guess, both Charlie and Hank want to sleep with Renee Zellweger and so the film locks into a semi-amusing love triangle consisting of Jim Carrie’s elastic faces and Renee Zellweger.

Also, some guys are chasing Renee Zellweger for some reason. I wish I could elaborate on why, but frankly, I have no idea and don’t care enough to read the synopsis on IMDb. The bad guys somewhat irrelevant to the focus of the film and only serves as a means to keep Charlie and Irene on the run (the guys that are chasing them are Chris Cooper and Richard Jenkins, two great actors, here choosing throwaway roles).

And so, for most of the film, we find ourselves watching Jim Carrie make jokes about dildos and killing a cow. As per usual, Carrie’s physical work is impressive and his zaniness is appreciated, but the content is utterly sub-par. This is the second time Jim Carrie has worked with the Farrelly Brothers and it is my recommendation you stick to their first collaboration.

Rating:

On a scale of one to Casablanca this film is a “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III”

Rationalization:

The whole time I was sitting there I kept thinking ‘Come on, lets get better. You can do it. Come on” but it just didn’t get better. The highest praise I can bestow upon this film is that it has some amusing gags. Probably my favorite part of “Me, Myself, and Irene” was Charlie’s street talking and intelligent children discussing their prospects for college. Then again, these characters later sodomize a cop with a chicken. In another movie, that would be horribly disturbing. Here it tries to pass as humor.

(Don’t worry, this is not to suggest the Ninja Turtles rape people with chickens. It is not the ninja way to do such things)