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