DIRECTORS
Bobby
Farrelly
Peter Farrelly
SCREENWRITERS
Peter
Farrelly
Mike Cerrone
Bobby Farrelly
PRODUCERS
Bobby Farrelly
Peter Farrelly
Bradley Thomas
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Mark Irwin
MUSIC
Lee Scott
Pete Yorn
EDITOR
Christopher Greenbury
CAST
Jim Carrey (Charlie/Hank)
Renée Zellweger (Irene)
Anthony Anderson (Jamaal)
Mongo Brownlee (Lee Harvey)
Jerod Mixon (Shonte Jr.)
Chris Cooper (Lt. Gerke)
Michael Bowman (Whitey)
Richard Jenkins (Agent Boshane)
Robert Forster (Colonel Partington)
Lenny Clarke (Barber Shop Car Owner)
Anna Kournikova (Motel Manager)
MPAA rating: R
Running
time: 116m
U.S. release: June 23, 2000
Video availability: VHS - DVD
Official website
Other Farrelly
Bros. movies
reviewed on this site:
- Dumb
and Dumber
- Kingpin
- There's Something About Mary
|
A
few years ago, Kevyn Aucoin transformed a bunch of modern-day
actresses into classic-movie actresses and published the makeover
photos in a book called Making Faces. Jim Carrey could
publish a book like that, too, but he wouldn't need makeup --
the entire book could chronicle his thousand facial expressions.
In Me, Myself & Irene, there's a brilliant moment
in which Carrey, as a mild-mannered Rhode Island highway motorcycle
cop, is pushed over the edge and morphs from nice-guy Charlie
to another, more aggressive personality, named Hank. The camera
sits and watches Carrey as he twitches and bends his features
like so much Silly Putty. Who needs computer effects when you
have Jim Carrey? He does more amazing things from the neck up
than most people can do with an entire FX crew.
Me, Myself & Irene is another gleefully offensive
comedy from Peter and Bobby Farrelly, the Rhode Island brothers
whose There's
Something About Mary owned the summer of 1998 and was
the youngest movie to earn a spot on AFI's 100 Funniest Movies
list. Their new movie, for some people, may suffer in comparison,
and there aren't any scenes that made me laugh as long and hard
as the smackdown between Ben Stiller and Warren. But MM&I
is still consistently filthy and funny, with the Farrellys' usual
attention to disability that will surely be misread as insensitivity
to disability. The Farrelly universe is populated by people of
all shapes, sizes, colors, and mental/physical problems, and
we laugh at them not because they're different but because they're
human -- they're as screwed up as anyone else.
Like Mary, MM&I has a lengthy opening act setting
up the story. Some reviews will inevitably blow some of the surprises
for you, so I'll let you discover for yourself how the very white
Charlie winds up with three black sons who grow up to be gargantuan
high-school kids with gargantuan IQs to match. (The trio of sons
are played by Anthony Anderson, Jerod Mixon, and Mongo Brownlee.
Remember those names -- you'll probably be hearing them a lot
this summer. These guys steal the movie, which isn't easy considering
the star.) After Charlie snaps and becomes the mean, psychotic
Hank (which is multiple-personality disorder, not schizophrenia,
contrary to the movie's definition), he's assigned to deliver
a criminal named Irene (Renée Zellweger) from Rhode Island
to upstate New York. Problem is, both Charlie and Hank fall in
love with Irene along the way.
Along the way, there are also jokes involving ... well, I originally
listed a few in here, but (A) that would be giving away the jokes,
and (B) most of them are fairly unprintable. The Farrellys' comedy
depends a lot on the shock value of raunchy sight gags; earlier
audiences got more of a bang out of the hair-gel scene in Mary
than later viewers did, after it became the talk of the summer.
I don't know what will be the water-cooler outrage in MM&I,
though a couple of scenes involving animals may qualify; so might
the morning-after scene between Charlie and Irene, which gives
us the classic line "I didn't put it up there -- you
did!"
Renée Zellweger, who has sort of been adrift since her
star-making turn in Jerry Maguire, re-establishes herself
here as a woman to watch; like Cameron Diaz in Mary, she's
a good sport and a note of class amid boy's-club hijinks. But
it's really Carrey's show, as any Carrey movie has to be. Whether
he's the hapless Charlie or the Eastwood-esque Hank, Carrey keeps
us connected to his lowest desires and highest hopes; this is
actually a fairly detailed and sensitive portrait of mental disability,
done in a low-comedy context. At one point Charlie bursts into
tears, and you're torn between feeling sorry for him and laughing
at the ridiculous whistling noise coming from his broken nose.
Carrey and the Farrellys specialize in that kind of split-personality
scene, where you don't know whether to laugh or cry. They also
tell you, What the hell, you might as well laugh. |
