Some of the scenes are so funny you can't help but laugh out loud . . . and wonder why there aren't more of them.
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The Farrelly brothers seem to be splashing around in the shallow end of the comedy pool these days. Given their apparent fondness for foul and tasteless humor, make that a birdbath. What happened to the guys who gave us a clever quasi-romantic comedy that was also filled with what seemed like nonstop outrageous gags? Why can't these guys repeat the success of "There's Something About Mary" (1998), which had all the comedy judges flashing 8s, 9s and 10s as these guys impressed everyone with their Olympian comic twists and backflips? They took gross-out humor to new heights.
Since that bona fide classic, the brothers have floundered with films that seem considerably dumbed down--even from their first uneven-but-promising outing, "Dumb and Dumber" (1994), and the better-still "Kingpin" (1996). I'm talking about mediocrities like "Stuck on You" (2003), "Shallow Hal" (2001), and this film that the brothers did immediately after "Mary": "Me, Myself & Irene" (2000). It makes you wonder why they haven't been able to find the same combination of smart writing and raunchy humor that drove "Mary." Some of the scenes in "Me, Myself & Irene" are so hilariously funny that you can't help but wish the laughs were more consistent.
"Me, Myself & Irene" is a classic Jim Carrey vehicle insomuch as it gives him plenty of opportunities to ply his rubber-faced comedy while splitting his time between playing a clueless, easygoing fellow who's pushed around and taken advantage of and this guy's unleashed alter ego, who'd rather give crap to people (in this film, quite literally) than quietly take it.
Carrey plays Rhode Island State Trooper Charlie Baileygates, a quintessential nice guy who's so nice that people walk all over him. Like Mayberry's Barney Fife, when this guy walks into a barber shop and tells someone he has to move his car, he gets the keys tossed at him and is told to move it himself . . . as if he were a valet. Incident after incident happens to build up an incredible tension and resentment, all of which seem to begin the day he carried his bride over the threshold and then turned to the little person chauffeur who drove them and asked (he thought innocently enough), "Do you people take checks?" YOU PEOPLE? Like, black people? Like little people? Suddenly, Charlie's getting the tar wailed out of him by a little person with nun-chucks! And worse, when his bride learns that his diminutive assailant is, like her, a member of Mensa, well, you know where that's going. Triplets pop out of her nine months later, and to everyone's horror (except Charlie's, who suppresses his response) all three are black.
Never mind. Even after his bride leaves with the little man of her dreams (Tony Cox, in a riotous role), Charlie is such a nice guy that he bonds with his three little boys--though he gives in to them when they want to watch Richard Pryor and Chris Rock on TV, and soon all three are saying muthafucka this and muthafucka that, and hapless Charlie just laughs along with it. While I think it's great that Jamaal (Anthony Anderson), Lee Harvey (Mongo Brownlee), and Shonte Jr. (Jerod Mixon) are portrayed as exceptionally smart kids (they are, after all, the spawn of two geniuses), it seems borderline racist to have them talking they way they do as very LARGE older men who haven't seemed to have grown up much. That said, it's when these three get together with "daddy" that the film seems most vital--much more so than the split personality that Charlie develops from denying his feelings all these years. When Carrey does his nice guy Charlie one minute and bad boy Hank Evans the next, the back-and-forth isn't nearly as engaging, even with them fighting over the same woman. Make that especially with them fighting over the same woman.
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[release]23094[/release]