When in doubt, gross them out.
That could be the mantra of the Farrelly brothers, who stoop to new comic lows with Me, Myself and Irene, opening in theatres today. Nursing moms, incontinent Great Danes, feminine hygiene - nothing is sacred.
Not that that's a bad thing. You don't go to a Farrelly brothers movie to see Woody Allen characters and Whit Stillman dialogue. You go to see toilet humour, sex jokes and just how far over the top this one will be.
Jim Carrey takes it pretty far over the top indeed as Charlie Baileygates, a Rhode Island state trooper who is such a simpering, spineless pushover that no one treats him with the tiniest smidgen of respect. Even a little girl in the street screams an ear-splitting obscenity at him.
The humiliations build and build, climaxing 18 years after his wedding when his wife (Traylor Howard) leaves him for a black midget limo driver (Tony Cox) who is the real father of the couple's three boys, even though Charlie refuses to acknowledge that these three black children did not spring from his own loins.
Finally, Charlie snaps, and alternate personality Hank Baileygates - the Mr. Hyde to Charlie's Dr. Jekyll - emerges to wreak revenge on everyone who has wronged poor Charlie, whether it means relieving himself on the Great Dane owner's lawn or embarrassing a woman in the checkout line by asking her if she's got a little extra cheese on her taco. (See the movie and you'll get it.)
Charlie gets medication to control his split personality, just in time to be given the assignment of escorting a crime witness named Irene Waters (the adorable Renee Zellweger) to upstate New York for some bit of official business or another. When bad guys who want Irene rubbed out began chasing them, Charlie loses his medication, leading to frequent Hank outbursts. And a love triangle - Charlie and Hank both fall for Irene.
Carrey, of course, is ideally suited to the rubber-facing that requires switching between Charlie and Hank, and the Farrellys (of Dumb & Dumber, Kingpin and There's Something About Mary fame) have set up plenty of gags to show him off, ranging from the hysterical (a wounded cow in the road that refuses to die) to simply sophomoric (a villain who gets a chicken inserted in places that chickens aren't meant to go, unless you happen to be a hen).
Some of the best moments of the film come when Charlie is being a typical dad with his three black sons, who talk like ghetto rappers yet have genius-level IQs and argue about complicated homework problems.
But this kind of gentler, funnier humour is largely absent. Me, Myself and Irene lacks the good-natured heart that made There's Something About Mary more than just a gross-out comedy with hair gel and zipper gags, and instead relies on a threadbare plot to join the bits of shtick. But man cannot survive on chicken jokes alone.
(This film is rated R)
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