Me, Myself, & Irene (2000) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)
The latest from the Farrelly brothers, the evil geniuses who are responsible for Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, and There's Something About Mary.
It contains their usual supply of jokes about;
  • the handicapped
  • bathroom functions
  • sexual functions

Some of these are very funny, while others seem to miss the mark, but they just keep firing one after another.

My own favorite scene is one where Carrey, as a tender-hearted policeman, finds a dying cow in the middle of the road, and elects to perform a mercy killing. After emptying his pistol into the still active cow, he ends up pistol-whipping it into unconsciousness.

NUDITY REPORT
95% of Shannon Whirry's breast is seen as Carrey sucks it.

Co-author Mike Cerrone also took an acting role, with a chicken head up his (bare) ass.

Carrey's butt was seen briefly, as he cleaned it in the hotel sink.
The comedic hook is that the Carrey character is a really good guy who has stood back meekly all his life while people dumped on him. The years of repression have caused him to create an alter ego to act out the anger which he can't express as himself. Enter "Hank", his hidden self, who pees on cars in the handicapped spots, kicks little kids asses, calls albinos "q-tips", shits on his neighbor's lawn, etc.

The plot is some lame stuff about crooked law enforcement agents covering up something or another involving Renee Zellweger, who in turn needs Jim Carrey, in one or the other of his personalities, to protect her from the baddies. Who cares? I didn't even pay much attention to it. Of course, you know the good guys will end up OK. It's not a friggin Abel Ferrara movie, after all.

DVD info from Amazon.

  • Widescreen anamorphic enhanced for 16x9 screens.

  • Director's commentary

  • About a dozen deleted scenes with optional commentary

  • Some short vignettes and featurettes on the making of the film

  • Music video
Carrey is funny, and very effective at making the transition from character to character, but the scenes at the end, of him fighting himself (a comedic version of the Edward Norton scenes in Fight Club), go on much too long.

His three sons are hilarious, although they are essentially a one-joke premise. They are black, actually the sons of two Mensa members. They have genius IQ's, but still talk "street", so the one joke is the combination of their abstruse conceptual brains mixed with their street slang. (E.g,, "Enrico Fermi be turnin' over in his motherfuckin' grave, he hear you")

They punctuate the film's happy ending by turning to the camera, all family warmth like the Beverly Hillbillies sayin' "Y'all come back", except they say "thanks for watching our motherfuckin' movie"

My son and daughter liked it a lot (he's 17, she's 14). I liked it better than Dumb and Dumber, but nowhere near as much as the brilliant "Something about Mary". I'd stack it a hair under the cynical "Kingpin" in the Farrelly pantheon.

Their next project with live actors (2002) is "Shallow Hal", with Garry Shandling, Jack Black, and Gwyneth. A really shallow guy eventually finds that he can actually love an ugly girl for her inner self.

The Critics Vote

  • No consensus: Ebert 1.5/4, Berardinelli 3/4, Apollo 76/100. Critics were split up and down, as they always are with the Farrelly brothers. Ebert likes many of their movies, but didn't like this one.

  • Rotten Tomatoes summary. Mixed reviews again. 56% positive overall, only 40% from the top critics.

The People Vote ...

  • With their votes ... IMDB summary: IMDb voters score it 6.2, Apollo users 57/100.
  • With their dollars ... it cost a bloated $51 million, that's a lot for a broad comedy, but repaid investors with near-hit status. $90 million in domestic gross alone, in a 3000 screen distribution.
IMDb guideline: 7.5 usually indicates a level of excellence, about like three and a half stars from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm watchability, about like two and a half stars from the critics. The fives are generally not worthwhile unless they are really your kind of material, about like two stars from the critics. Films under five are generally awful even if you like that kind of film, equivalent to about one and a half stars from the critics or less, depending on just how far below five the rating is.

My own guideline: A means the movie is so good it will appeal to you even if you hate the genre. B means the movie is not good enough to win you over if you hate the genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an open mind about this type of film. C means it will only appeal to genre addicts, and has no crossover appeal. D means you'll hate it even if you like the genre. E means that you'll hate it even if you love the genre. F means that the film is not only unappealing across-the-board, but technically inept as well.

Based on this description, this film is a solid C.

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