Me, Myself & Irene
2000 · Directed by Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly
Original language: English
- comedy
The story
Rhode Island State Trooper Charlie Baileygates has a multiple personality disorder. One personality is crazy and aggressive, while the other is more friendly and laid back. Both of these personalities fall in love with the same woman named Irene after Charlie loses his medication.
What it’s like
Bright, flat daylight and wide suburban establishing shots give way to a road-movie look: sun-washed highways, roadside motels with buzzing neon signs, and cramped patrol-car interiors lit by dashboard glow. The Farrelly brothers shoot in plain, workmanlike coverage with lots of mugging close-ups, so the camera stays out of the way and lets Jim Carrey's rubber-faced physical comedy fill the frame. The score is cheerful and bouncy, with pop needle-drops and slapstick sound effects that punctuate every collapse and double-take. The rhythm is brisk and episodic, a sequence of escalating mishaps across Rhode Island and into the open country, with the tone bright and goofy rather than mean. Its emotional core is a wounded, decent man slowly learning to trust himself and the woman he loves, under all the chaos. The intensity is moderate: frequent crude humour, sexual innuendo and bathroom gags, a number of scuffles and punch-ups played for laughs, and a few tense police confrontations, but no real gore and little lasting cruelty. It suits a silly night in with friends, a comfort rewatch, or anyone who wants broad, physical laughs and a big-hearted, slightly chaotic romance, though its jokes about mental illness are dated and may grate with viewers sensitive to that.
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