Me, Myself & Irene

USA 2000

Reviewed by Leslie Felperin

Synopsis

Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.

Rhode Island, 1983. Good-natured teenager Charlie Baileygates marries his high-school sweetheart Layla, but her infidelity with a black dwarf produces non-identical triplets, whom Charlie accepts as his own. Layla leaves him; Charlie raises his sons - Jamaal, Lee Harvey and Shonté Jr - by himself. Seventeen years later, Charlie has become a Rhode Island state trooper, but no one respects his authority because he's too nice. Suddenly, he develops an aggressive alternative personality named Hank.

After being placed on medication, Charlie is charged with escorting attractive Irene P. White to upstate New York to face trumped-up charges: Irene's ex-boyfriend Dickie Thurman is in cahoots with federal agent Boshane and local policeman Gerke to stop her rumbling their illegal scheme involving the development of a golf course. Both Charlie's personalities fall in love with Irene, and when he loses his medication, Hank emerges and struggles with Charlie over her. The two/three of them go on the run, pursued by Dickie, Boshane and Gerke as well as the Rhode Island state troopers and Charlie's sons (who are able to track down their father). Along the way, Irene and Charlie hook up with an Albino named Casper who claims to have killed his parents.

Hank fools Irene into thinking he's Charlie in order to have sex with her, but Irene comes to love Charlie. Charlie learns to express his anger, putting an end to Hank's influence. Boshane and Gerke are exposed and Thurman arrested, after a struggle with Charlie. Irene tries to leave Rhode Island, but is stopped from doing so by state troopers and she is happily reunited with Charlie.

Review

Me, Myself & Irene goes out of its way to shock its audience with the bizarre and socially unacceptable antics of its protagonist, centres on a love triangle involving two halves of a man with a split personality who at one point literally beats himself up, and hinges thematically on frustrated male rage. When you get down to it, it's Fight Club with extra slapstick, although Me, Myself & Irene isn't nearly as self-important - or, admittedly, as relentlessly inventive. Having said that, both films suffer from a certain debilitating bittiness, a failure to add up to a more satisfying whole than might be expected from the brilliance of their individual parts.

This is more noticeable in Me, Myself & Irene, which at its worst feels like a collection of comic off-cuts from such earlier Farrelly Brothers' films as Dumb & Dumber and There's Something about Mary. As with these films, Me, Myself & Irene's narrative structure is essentially picaresque - therefore bitty by nature. (The film follows lovers-on-the-run Charlie, a split personality, and Irene, escaping her gangster ex-lover whose crimes are so sketchily described it's difficult to tell how they fit into the plot.)

The virtue and vice of the Farrellys' movies are that they have so much crammed into them. The directors are capable of dazzling, audacious gags, but their habit of not knowing when to quit can be annoying (as when Charlie makes repeated attempts to kill a cow, a joke that recalls the treatment meted out to the ferocious dog in Mary). The minor characters have so much vitality and detail they can be distracting (Lee Evans' boffin in Mary; Charlie's three jive-talking genius sons here). It's the kind of comedy that plays well on video or, better yet, DVD, where you can fast forward or skip to your favourite moments (the scene in which a chicken is stuffed up a cop's rear end seems destined to become a favourite at university halls of residence).

In terms of grossness, the so-called shocking material here is hardly any more audacious than that found in recent Farrelly imitations such as American Pie; Me, Myself & Irene just has a lot more of it. The film has caused particular controversy in the US for its depiction of mental illness (which hardly seems more frivolously used here as a plot device than it is in, say, Fight Club), ethnic minorities and differently-abled people. In the end, one of the film's great virtues, true of the Farrellys' work as a whole, is that it pays tribute to otherness by depicting it with humour rather than patronising solemness. Increasingly, mainstream Hollywood cinema can only present black characters as wise, noble and good. In Me, Myself & Irene, Charlie's three black sons are intellectually gifted but also foul-mouthed, and blithely converse in the misogynist argot of hip-hop discourse. ("No bitches after 11 o'clock," their dad admonishes them when he leaves on his trip.)

Me, Myself & Irene won't go down in history as the great screwball-slapstick comedy it could have been, a standard There's Something about Mary almost attains. The real weakness of the film is how little Renée Zellweger's Irene has to do, apart from hitting a guy over the head with a dildo and reacting to Jim Carrey's tour de force physical performance as Charlie - and strong female characters are the skeleton of good screwball. Like Fight Club, this is a guy film.

Credits

Directors
Bob Farrelly
Peter Farrelly
Producers
Bradley Thomas
Bobby Farrelly
Peter Farrelly
Screenplay
Peter Farrelly
Mike Cerrone
Bobby Farrelly
Director of Photography
Mark Irwin
Editor
Christopher Greenbury
Production Designer
Sidney J. Bartholomew Jr
Music
Peter Yorn
Lee Scott
©Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Production Companies
Twentieth Century Fox presents a Conundrum Entertainment production
a Farrelly Brothers movie
Executive Producers
Charles B. Wessler
Tom Schulman
Co-producers
Marc S. Fischer
James B. Rogers
Mark Charpentier
Associate Producers
Linda Fields-Hill
Kristofer W. Meyer
Patrick Healy
Clem Franek
Production Supervisor
2nd Unit:
Hank Chilton
Production Co-ordinator
Melissa 'Stanley' Cohen
Unit Production Managers
Garrett Grant
2nd Unit:
Marc S. Fischer
Location Managers
Eric Hedayat
2nd Unit:
Adam McCarthy
Rhode Island Unit:
Adam McCarthy
Location Co-ordinator
Kori Shadrick
Post-production Supervisor
P. Todd Coe
2nd Unit Director
Josh Klausner
Assistant Directors
James B. Rogers
Hal Olofsson
Ingrid Behrens
2nd Unit:
Hal Olofsson
Script Supervisors
Steven R. Gehrke
2nd Unit:
Ilene Pickus
Lisa M. Arnone
Casting
Rick Montgomery
Associate:
Michael G. Miller
Group ADR Voices:
Loop Troop
Caitlin McKenna
Terri Douglas
2nd Unit Director of Photography
Robert D. Tomer
Camera Operators
Robert D. Tomer
John 'Buzz' Moyer
2nd Unit Underwater:
Michael Ferris
Steadicam Operator
John 'Buzz' Moyer
Wescam Operators
David Norris
Stan McClain
Visual Effects
Hammerhead Productions Inc
Special Effects
Co-ordinator:
Robert Vazquez
Foreman:
Gary Pilkinton
Technicians:
Richard E. Perry
Joe DiGaetano
Kathleen Tonkin
Michael H. Clark
Patrick Tantalo
Andrew Campbell
Graphic Artist
Mark Bachman
Puppeteers
Tony Gardner
Jim Beinke
Russell Shinkle
Paul Salamoff
Conor McCullagh
Art Director
Arlan Jay Vetter
Set Designer
Richard Fojo
Set Decorator
Scott Jacobson
Master Scenic Artist
Robert Topol
Costume Designer
Pamela Withers
Costume Supervisor
Virginia Burton
Key Make-up
Cindy Williams
Additional Make-up, Rhode Island Unit
Joseph A. Rossi
Make-up Effects
Designer:
Tony Gardner
Supervisor:
Jim Beinke
Technician:
Vincent Prentice
Make-up Effects/ Animatronics
Alterian Studios, Inc.
Tony Gardner
Russell Shinkle
Jim Beinke
Paul Salamoff
Key Hair
Ardis Cohen
Additional Hair, Rhode Island Unit
Emma C. Rotondi
Title Design
Chelsea Heneise
Main/End Titles
Custom Film Effects/
Lumeni
Opticals
Pacific Title
Music Supervisors
Tom Wolfe
Manish Raval
Supervising Music Editor
Lee Scott
Music Editor
Brian 'The Bull' Bulman
Score Engineer
R. Walt Vincent
Score Mixer
Michael C. Ross
Soundtrack
"Highway Patrol" - Junior Brown; "It's Alright" - Bret Reilly; Mendelssohn's "The Wedding Procession"; "Any Major Dude Will Tell You" - Wilco; "Where He Can Hide" - Tom Wolfe; "Blowin' in the Wind" - Bob Dylan; "Sentimental Guy", "I Love Life", "Love Me Cha Cha" - Jimmy Luxury and The Tommy Rome Orchestra; "I'd Like That" - XTC; "Fire Like This" - Hardknox, contains portions of "Groove Me", contains a sample of "Walking by Myself" - Jimmy Rogers; "Hem of Your Garment" - Cake; "The World Ain't Slowin' Down" - Ellis Paul; "Bad Sneakers" - The Push Stars; "Bodhisattva" - Brian Setzer Orchestra; "Just Another", "Strange Condition" - Peter Yorn; "Motherfucker" - The Dwarves; "Monkey in Your Soul" - Freedy Johnston; "Perpetrator" - Hipster Daddy-O and the Handgrenades; "Breakout" - Foo Fighters; "Don't Say You Don't Remember" - Sally Taylor, Chris Soucy; "Razor Boy" - Billy Goodrum; "Can't Find the Time To Tell You" - Hootie & The Blowfish; "Happy Feeling" - Billy Valentine; "Only a Fool Would Say That" - Ivy; "Chain Lightning" - Leon Redbone; "Deep Inside of You" - Third Eye Blind; "El Capitan" - Alta Mira; "Do It Again" - Smashmouth; "Totalimmortal" - The Offspring; "Making the Changes"; "Thank Heaven for Little Girls"; "La cumparsita"; "Fun at the Fair"; "Celebration"
Sound Mixer
Jonathan Earl Stein
Re-recording Sound Mixers
Scott Millan
Bob Beemer
Re-recording Engineer
Gary Simpson
Sound Recordist
Andrea Eliseyan
Supervising Sound Editors
John Joseph Thomas
Vanessa Ashley Lapato
Dialogue Editors
Scott G. Haller
Alison Fisher
Sound Effects Editor
Ted Caplan
ADR
Recordists:
Diane Lucas
David Lucarelli
Mixers:
Greg Steele
Charleen Richards
Foley
Artists:
Alicia Irwin
Dawn Fintor
Mixer:
David Betancourt
Supervising Editor:
Jonathan Klein
Editor:
Hamilton Sterling
Research Consultant
Shawn Gallo
Stunt Co-ordinator
Rick Barker
Animals
Birds & Animals Unlimited
Animal Wrangler
Susan Humphrey
Helicopter Pilot
Al Cerullo
Film Extract
Richard Pryor Here and Now (1983)
Cast
Jim Carrey
Charlie Baileygates/ Hank
Renée Zellweger
Irene P. White
Chris Cooper
Lieutenant Gerke
Robert Forster
Colonel Partington
Richard Jenkins
Agent Boshane
Rob Moran
Trooper Finneran
Traylor Howard
Layla
Daniel Greene
Dickie Thurman
Zen Gesner
Agent Peterson
Tony Cox
limo driver
Anthony Anderson
Jamaal
Mongo Brownlee
Lee Harvey
Jerod Mixon
Shonté Jr
Mike Cerrone
Officer Stubie
John-Eliot Jordan
pizza boy
Michael Bowman
Whitey/Casper
Andrew Phillips
Lee Harvey aged 9
Jeremy Maleek Leggett
Jamaal aged 9
Justin Chandler
Shonté Jr aged 9
Steve Sweeney
Neighbour Ed
Lenny Clarke
barber shop car owner
Herb Flynn
Herb the barber
Heather Hodder
jump rope girl
Tracey Abbott
grocery store mom
Jackie Flynn
Trooper Pritchard
Steve Tyler
maternity doctor
Googy Gress
guy on the street
Joey McGilberry
helicopter agent
Sean P. Gildea
kid's father
Anna Kournikova
motel manager
Bob Mone
Officer Delicato
Richard Tyson
gun shop owner
Dan Murphy
Agent Steve Parfitt
Cam Neely
Trooper Sea Bass
Brian Hayes Currie
soda machine man
Nikki Tyler Flynn
Trooper Maryann
Mark Leahy
Vermont police officer
Kevin J. Flynn
barber shop wiseguy
Conrad Goode
softball player
John Mark Andrade
handsome barber shop guy
Scott T. Neely
Trooper Neely
Shannon Whirry
beautiful mom
Jerry Parker
paramedic
Heather Dyson
reporter
Christine DiCarlo
TV reporter
Marc R. Levine
golfer
Bob Weekes
train conductor
Ezra Buzzington
disabled guy
Will Coogan
disabled guy's aide
Rex Allen Jr
narrator
Certificate
15
Distributor
20th Century Fox (UK)
10,479 feet
116 minutes 26 seconds
Dolby Digital/DTS/SDDS
Colour by
DuArt Film and Video
Prints by
DeLuxe
Last Updated: 20 Dec 2011