Hey folks, Harry here. Well, as many of you know, there was a national pay sneak of ME, MYSELF AND IRENE tonight at theaters across the country. And I've been having reviews pour in from around the countryside... from Canada to the midwest to the east coast and the west... and the word is extremely all over the place. Now, I saw a rough print of this film.... A loooooong time ago before many of the post things were added. The narrator wasn't in place entirely. They did some pick-up shots for gags and other funny moments... BUT... I must say that... when I saw the film with that test audience, I laughed my ass off. Now sure, the plot is by the numbers... but dear god the gags just killed me. I mean.... the things that I didn't expect to see.... just all over the place. Sure it wasn't MODERN TIMES up in the corner, but I cried friggin laughing at this one. But... who knows what alls been done since I saw it.
Me, Myself and Irene
In honor of this film I would like to make a confession- I too suffer from Multiple Personality Disorder (which is often incorrectly referred to as schizophrenia in the popular media.) And in the spirit of tolerance and justice which Me, Myself and Irene inspired in me (warning: sarcasm alert) I am, this one time only, not going to edit out the comments of the other of myselves who also takes an interest in film. Thus, I would like you all to meet Prof. Gilles “Juju” Basmati, itinerant film critic and author of the forthcoming book The Caress of the Uberman: the Films of Arnold Schwarzenegger. His contributions will be marked with italics, although somehow I doubt there will be much confusion as to who says what. You will have to forgive him, though. Between the fact that English isn’t his first language and the Semioticspeak, well, he can be a handful. Oh that Juju!
Anyway, on to the film. I would like to make my position on the Farrelly Brothers clear: they make funny comedies, but terrible films. And M2I lives up to both halves of that equation, fittingly enough. In fact I would go so far as to describe this as the quintessential Farrellys movie: hurt your sides funny when they bugger off and get the hell out of Jim Carrey’s way, but root canal painful when they get it into their heads that they themselves have some talent and insight into the plight of man, best illustrated through the relationship between Charlie and his ‘sons’. Four grown men, related not by blood but through the vagaries of fate, living together in peace and harmony in the same household. Can there be no more touching bonding sequence than that in which Charlie and his three sons watch HBO together? Children age and grow, but just as Richard Pryor becomes Chris Rock we realize that change is illusory, and that what was once is still with us today, and will be tomorrow. So too are the bonds between men. Charlie’s kids are far and away the best thing in the movie, by the way. I won’t spoil any of their lines or best moments, but suffice it to say Chicken Run takes on a whole new meaning here. But while Jim and the kids are great, and there are about half a dozen typically over-the-top Farrellian moments (I won’t go so far as to say they are classic, although both the nursing mother brilliantly utilized by the supposedly crazed alternate personality, Hank, who also in his first few moments of ‘life’ reclaims other potent symbols of American manhood such as the automobile and extended ‘morning after’ sequence are pretty close) the flaws in this film weigh it down hopelessly. The narrator, for instance. Dear Goddess, the narrator. A lame attempt to recapture the magic of Jonathan Richman’s troubadour commentaries from There’s Something About Mary, they couldn’t even get the guy who narrates the Disney nature films, just someone who sounds vaguely like him. And like 99.99999% of the narration in Hollywood movies he adds nothing (they couldn’t even find a single joke for him) and explains nothing that you can’t figure out for yourself anyway. And the Farrellys obviously knew he wasn’t working, because they drop him completely 2/3 of the way through and just let the plot play itself out without any help from Rhode Island, the geographically inferior eastern state which is such a potent symbol of Charlie’s emotional emasculation. Even the plot itself is a drag on the comedy. Apparently not content to just let Jim Carrey act like a nut (the formula they mined in Dumb & Dumber) the Farrellys saddle the movie with some sort of vague enviromental/ land exploitation/ police corruption backstory that illuminates the other dualities in the film with precision. The casting of Chris Cooper, best known for his pivotal role in American Beauty, and Richard Jenkins, one of the DEA agents from Flirting with Disaster, are masterstrokes. Although technically the villains, it is their relationship which rings the truest throughout the film- their private asides, Jenkins’ jealous attentiveness whenever Cooper speaks to another cop- all these speak to a deep, long-standing familiarity with each other. And the presence of these two actors in particular cannot be happenstance- two actors best known for their roles as roadblocks to the comedy, since the entire last act is nearly devoid of gags while we wait for the damn plot to play itself out. Not to mention the sudden brutality- I’m all for shit and dildo jokes, but was it really necessary to demonstrate the hazards of pursuing the so-called ‘normal’ relationship dynamic, with Carrey in mortal peril, bleeding from multiple gunshot (that most phallic of weapons) wounds and perched precariously over turbulent waters attempting to rescue Zellweger.
Renee comes off well in the film, far better than Lauren Holly did in Dumb & Dumber. She looks quite comfortable playing straight person to Carrey, and is sexy cute as all hell. Jim, though, I have to say seemed a little off. Bored, maybe. He’s still extremely funny at times, but a lot of the physical schtick in M2I seemed recycled from earlier Carrey films, Liar Liar and the first Ace Ventura specifically. Yet another example of the lack of direction the Farrellys give their casts. I have nothing much to say about the token female presence in the film, except to say that she has fairly mannish features and a relatively slim, boyish physique.
M2I is easily the least of the Farrellys ‘big’ pictures (let’s not even bring Harry’s precious Kingpin or Outside Providence in to this.) There are funny gags, and if all you want is a laugh rate of about 12-15 l.p.h. then by all means see it. But I am more convinced than ever that Peter and Bobby should not be allowed behind a camera. They’d make great gag writers for someone, and they could probably pitch a killer treatment (although hopefully with an actual trained professional writing the finished script, of course.) Just someone please stop them before they film again. Someday they’re going to make a film without a Jim Carrey, Ben Stiller, or even a Bill Murray to bail them out, and the results will not be pretty.
Me, Myself and Irene’s metaphors may be transparent, but they do not distract from the overall comic thrust of the film. Man loses woman, finds other men; man chases woman cross-country, nearly gets killed. What could be truer- or funnier- than that? Bravo, Farrellys, bravo.
Next up we have AICN regular... Sheriff John T Chance firing away...
Howdy there partners. I usually do double reviews, but am flying solo today.
Me, Myself & Irene
I run hot and cold when it comes to the Farrelly's. I loved Dumb & Dumber. Kingpin left me pretty cold. There's Something About Mary was very cool. I wasn't sure what to expect when it came to MM&I, but was hoping for a few good laughs.
Me, Myself & Irene did have a few good laughs. Very, very, very few. I laughed out loud twice. I smirked a few times. The rest of the time I just sat open mouthed in amazement at the sheer awfulness of this film.
The Plot. Jim Carrey is a cop in love with Irene(Rene Z). Unfortunately, he also has a split personality(like they wouldn't have caught that in the psychological exams at the police academy), and the split also loves Irene. The two fight over her with what was supposed to be hilarious hijinks. And it should have been hilarious. What went wrong? Everything.
The Characters. Zellwegger was 100% wrong for this film. She isn't worthy of one of those personalities loving her, let alone both. Carrey does his schtick that he used on the Fox show, who's name I can't recall. Even that lame face where he shows all of his teeth. He is just not funny. He acts like he knows this film is terrible, and he isn't even going to try. Rob Moran plays a fellow cop. Someone please tell the Farrelly's that Rob Moran can not act. Rob Moran is not funny. Please quit giving Rob Moran work. The characters(along with lame dialogue, a plot that would've been exhausted in a half hour sitcom & sloppy direction)are one of the worst things about this movie.
Overall. What made There's Something About Mary so good is lost here. TSAM had great characters. Mary was sweet, loving, a good person, and worthy of everyone's love. Irene is a total bitch who's going to end up in a trailer park with half a dozen kid's with "bob" as their middle name. Carrey's "good" personality is stupid, annoying, and a complete moron. Ben Stiller's character was a good guy, if completely inept. We wanted to cheer him on. With Carrey, we just wish he'd go away. The supporting characters are uninteresting and wasted.
I just can't believe how all of these talented people came together and turned out a heaping pile of buffalo dung. What an incredible waste. 1 rattlesnake bite for this waste of film. Save your money and rent There's Something About Mary again.
Next up we have Skylar, you'll be reading his CHICKEN RUN review in the other section, who really liked ME, MYSELF AND IRENE, but felt it didn't quite live up all the way to it's comic potential. Hmmmm.... here ya go..
"Me, Myself, and Irene."
I just returned from seeing this new movie by the Farrelly Brothers, starring Jim Carrey. If you don't know already, Carrey plays Charlie, a highway patrolman who develops a second personality after years of suppressing his negative emotions.
I liked this movie a lot. I did not love it, however. I guess my main complaints come in comparison to "There's Something About Mary." In that movie I really cared for the characters and felt that they were fairly three dimensional. In "Me..." I did care for Carrey's character(s), but I thought Renee Zellweger's Irene was a bit flat. Her character was not given too much to work with. Because of this, I felt the inevitable romance between Charlie and Irene was not given enough depth and conflict to ever make me question whether or not the two would end up together.
Don't let these qualms stop you from seeing the movie when it comes out, though. There are many more good things about the movie than bad. First of all, Carrey's sons in the movie are hilarious and really steal any scene they're in. Carrey's interactions with them are priceless, both sweet and funny. I don't want to give away any major plot points or gags, but rest assured there are some good ones. The voice of the narrator is a nice, campy touch, too.
I was actually a little surprised at how "tame" the overall sight gags are. I guess after "Kingpin" and "...Mary" i expected the brothers Farrelly to push the envelope even further this time. Don't get me wrong, there are many of their usual crude and sexual references, but this time the actual "visual gross-outs" we see are less explicit than I would expect. I just think back to the first time I saw the zipper scene in "Mary" and how the Farrellys teased the audience about what everyone on screen could see without showing the audience anything. The tension builds as they describe Ben Stiller's . . . problem, and then, boom, they show it to us. And man do they show us what happened. Unfortunately, in "Me,..." there are none of these off the scale moments. Let me just say again, though, that this movie is VERY funny, and its humor value is only lessened if I compare it to other Farrelly brothers movies.
The performances are all high quality, especially Carrey who undergoes a complete physical transformation when he changes personalities from Charlie to Hank. Go see this movie and laugh the hardest you've laughed in a while. It's not perfect, but it's still damn good. Oh, and one last thing: the movie has one of the strangest and most touching end credits sequences I've ever seen. A "touching" end credits sequence? "What does he mean?" you ask. Well, it's not a part of the plot, but it's still something that I'll let you see for yourself. The Farrelly brothers seem to have a lot of respect for the people they work with, and for that I have a lot of respect for them.
In conlusion, next week you will have a choice of two good movies go to. I recommend you see both films if you have the chance, but if not, then at least see Chicken Run. Even you cynics will be pleasantly surprised. Me, Myself, and Irene is a funny, sometimes hilarious movie that did not quite reach its full potential. Thanks for listening.
Skylar
And here we have a reviewer that thought this was a 'disappointing piece of trash'... Hmmmm, well here's Bryan...
Harry-
I don't know if it means much to you now, with the film already being reviewed in magazines and very close to release, but I thought I'd tell you what I thought about this film. You see, I thought the film was a disappointing piece of trash. I didn't laugh once throughout the unfunny disaster and I want to tell you why. It's important to remember that while I found "Mary" overrated, I think "Kingpin" is one of the funniest films of all time. This film is a bunch of setups floating around without punchlines. Carrey's three black sons? I guess that's funny. But it's only a setup. Where's the point, the punchline? It was simply Carrey and his three black sons on screen together. Didn't strike a humor chord in me the first time, but then I'm subjected to the same non-joke over and over again. Kill me please. Number 2: the film had absolutely no narrative flow or point in its story. The police were corrupt and after Zellweger. That's all I know. What the fuck was going on? Nothing was explained and their was no comedic tension. Also, why is Chris Cooper in this film? He's probably the least funny actor on the planet, and one of the most boring. He sucked. Now...what about that friggin' albino? Are the Farrelly brothers just going to keep moving from race to race, handicap to handicap and expect me to laugh? Nothing was even remotely funny about the albino...he was an annoying pain in ass character, even more bothersome to me than that pizza jerk-off from Mary. As for Carrey's crazy antics, well, I seem to recall similar scenes in another film, a much better film, a masterpiece known as "Fight Club." What the hell was going on? It was the last scene of "Fight Club" for the entire third act of the movie!!!! Carrey wouldn't fucking stop! You see, once I realized what the joke was (the two personalities duke it out), and once I got "Fight Club" into my head, I was ready for the next joke. But no! I was forced to watch Carrey play his same shtick over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over..........and over and over....etc. and over and over again. I had a lot of other problems, but the main one was that the film wasn't funny. My friends and I all hated it and my packed theater stopped laughing about half way through. But the one major thing I'm really peeved about lays elsewhere. I read that the Farrelly's were scoring their film with Steely Dan covers. Dan is perhaps my favorite band of all time. I was psyched (though a little pissed off because I've always wanted to score a film with Steely). I expected to hear some kickass Steely song opening the film, some kickass Steely song closing the film, and a whole bunch of kickass Steely songs in between. Well, the five or six Steely covers that were actually in the film were either played A)badly by the cover artist, such as the shitty Brian Setzer cover or B)so far in the background that I couldn't even hear them. The main songs of the film were new songs (ahem...not STEELY!!) by crappy bands. By the time Wilco came on sounding like Johnny Cash covering "Only a Fool Would Say That," I was pissed off. I almost bought the friggin' soundtrack. Goddamn what a disappointing film. I really wanted to love this film, I was so ready to laugh my ass off. Instead, I got a piece of utter comedic crap. I'll cap it off with one more thing...The Farrelly's could have produced one of their best sight gags with Carrey's bandaged chin. The entire audience was waiting to see what was underneatht that bandage. And it was simply a predictable, cartoonish cleft. WHAT!!!!!??? Come on now. Tell me it wouldn't be funny and Kingpin-like to have a little penis or something dangling off the man's chin. How could they have thrown away a beautifully set up gag? And that's the movie's biggest problem...the Farrelly's have forgotten the importance of cinematic punchlines.
BRYAN TREITLER
Alright, NEXT up we have a look at ME, MYSELF AND IRENE from The Pardoner... who liked the film but didn't go batty for it.... read on...
Hidely-ho Harry - this is The Pardoner. Just trotted back from a preview screening of the Farrelly + Carrey collaboration, and I decided to finally give a review back to the great online community I've leached off of for so long. But first, I must introduce:
Lordings in chirches whan I preche,
I paine me to han an hautein speche,
And ringe it out as round as gooth a belle,
For I can al by rote that I telle.
ME, MYSELF & IRENE plays out like the lighter side of Fight Club. Unfortunately, despite being a comedy through and through, it was less funny than Fincher's schizophrenic drama.
Undeniably, Jim Carrey is an actor of unmatched physical ability. The scene when he first transforms Nice-Guy Charlie into Psycho-Boy Hank is astonishing; a perfect rendering of an earlier emotional description, thrown into a confession that make me proud to be Catholic only by guise. Even better is the way Hank explores his new body, getting used to its tolerances and quirks while letting Charlie take the rap. When Hank escalates this little adventure, he takes exploration to *ahem* new depths. You'll know what I mean. His self-combatant scenes beggar Ed Norton's in FIGHT CLUB, though they play out almost hollowly because Carrey does such an uncannily good job. He actually seemed to be fighting himself for control over his body, and this got a little unnerving. Funny, certainly, but also a wee bit creepy. I hope Carrey gets a chance to do something dangerous soon; I think he's gotten to the point where a physical comedy is too shallow a pond for him to swim happily in. But, I've got a sermon to finish...
Rene Zellweger puts in a pleasant turn as the love interest of both sides of Hank. I really dig this girl. She's a little skinny - the Farrelly's just couldn't let that one go by - but she could be selling shares of moon cheese, and I'd be lining up to buy. She's a good foil for Carrey, and they work fairly well together. Irene is as singular as Hank is dual, and the scenes where she has to cope with his indentity-bouncing are hysterically funny.
But, for me, the guys that made this movie worth seeing were Charlie's three enormous black kids. The Farrelly's could have just left the fact that the guy had three black kids and a white wife right there. Happily, they didn't. The three of them are absolutely wonderful, snapping off lines like firecrackers - think Chris Rock with an IQ of 160 and the ability to speak fluent German.. VERY fluent. What really shocked me was how much they overshadowed Carrey in their scenes together. It was like the master of facial contortion sort of blended into the wall paper for a few minutes, and let this triumverate of slang run the show. How does one correct a mistake in a quantum physics problem if one has been rasied on black comedians from Richard Pryor to Chris Rock? heh heh heh
But, don't let me give you the impression that MM&I was flawless. I liked this movie, but I'm more of an Oscar Wilde guy - I likes my humour as a diamond dagger on a silver plate, rather than a heap of dung on my shoe. Most of the jokes had me gasping for air as I punctured the eardrums of the poor bastard in front of me. A few of the jokes fell flatter than Jewel's voice (I have a really big problem with that whiney bitch... URGE TO KILL RISING...). Personal taste, but my gripes with this movie go beyond simple yearnings for the Stratford and Shaw Festivals.
Most individual bits are handled well, but they're strung together like black pearls on butcher twine. The opening of the movie, and the slow and raucous build towards Charlie's insanity were done so well I felt let down when the feeble conclusion came stumbling towards me. The mian reason for this was, as I said, the thing, stringy, cheap plot the movie hangs on. It was so utterly vacant of intelligence or even suitability for this movie I wanted to hit the rewind button and watch the first 25 minutes again. They did such a good job of building up Charlie's character convincingly and yet amusingly, from his wedding night, to the birth of his suspicious triplets, and through to Hank's emergence, that I was furious they choked so hard on the "plot".
Also, the Michael Bowman, the much-touted Albino, was only mildly funny. He could have promise as an actor, but I wasn't terribly impressed. Granted, there are bloody few competent Albino acotrs out there, but his delivery was weaker than his complexion.
What really freaked me out was that the scene where Irene confronts Charlie about his "shortcomings" compared to Hank was missing from this cut. Maybe, just maybe, that scene slipped through the cracks in my leaky attack of a brain, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't there. Granted, this absence is made up for by a scene that I can only describe as "Best Use of a Cow in a Motion Picture", but I was still outraged.
In short, I liked ME, MYSELF & IRENE, but I'm not exactly marvelling at its comic genius, and I'll try to avoid watching it again. Some of you will undoubtedly find it funnier than I, but there you have it - try to guess the antecedent. Ye, unbokele anoon thy purs...
Radix malorum est cupiditas.
The Pardoner
And lastly... we have THE MAUS who thought the film was "an Amazing Pile Of Crap!" I just... I don't know. I mean, personally I thought this was a really funny fucking movie. BUT... heh... Some laugh... some scream... which will you be?
Harry,
What a piece of shit. I mean, what an amazing pile of crap. I cannot believe I just dumped today's poker winnings on that total pile of shit. A movie that lurches so improbably from plot point to plot point that I was dumbfounded by the idiocy of the writers. It’s a movie filled with characters from other films.
Jim Carrey of The Mask, Renee Zellweger from Jerry Maguire, the mass murderer from There’s Something About Mary, the FBI guy from Flirting with Disaster (literally), and fucking the Klump Brothers seem to have snuck into the film. Chris Cooper, by the way, comes via American Beauty.
Now I love all of those characters, but what the fuck are they all doing in the movie I went to see? It made no sense. They were characters from different movies. Movies I LOVED. And this movie, your usually mild mannered reviewer just HATED. I mean because it sucked. This is not an opinion. This is a rational judgment. You look at the craft of the filmmaking (minimal) the quality of the screenwriting (horrible) the caliber of the performances – well:
Here’s the thing. Jim Carrey’s physical comedy is unbelievable. What he can do with his body is fantastic. Renee Zellweger is amazingly cute and tries to make a go of it with remarkably thin material. But IF THERE’S NO STORY then it is impossible to care about the characters. Because ya just don’t buy it.
There is some vague story about how Irene may or may not know about some big cover-up. But we never find out what it is. She and Charlie (Jim Carrey) end up on the lam or some such for no apparent reason. Plot hole abound. At first, Charlie must take medication or turn into Hank (The Mask character) but then that idea is dropped completely and sometimes he’s Hank and sometimes he’s not. It might have to do with when he gets angry (like I am now) but not necessarily. Literally, that’s how much sense it makes.
This fundamental plot problem was most evidently problematic when we cut from one scene and bam – Carrey is back to Hank for no apparent reason. Script wise, some basic screenwriting tips: Don't explain what you see on screen. Don't have characters sum up what has just happened. Don't use a narrator and then just drop the device for no apparent reason. And try to have the thing make sense.
Plenty of ass, fart, shit and fuck jokes. But they don’t mean anything because you don’t care about the characters and you don’t believe what is happening. Something About Mary was sublime because at it’s core, it was believable. And story wise it was simple: the main character wanted to win back the girl he was (almost) with in high school. A simple, and primal premise. The ‘gross out scenes’ were exaggerations but not simply stupid.
Harry, there’s not much reason for me to waste any more time and energy on this review. And I’m sorry to say to all of you: don’t waste your money. Rant OFF.
The Maus
