The comedy genre is one of the few strands of film that ages dreadfully. One little slip up, cultural appropriation or timely nod to a no longer relevant media personality and you’ve nearly crushed the entire build-up of the film. Some are rather timeless, like Chuck Norris’ brief cameo in Dodgeball, or Adam Sandler’s little role in Dirty Work. Nothing kills the pace of a film quite like a comedy that feels very much a product of its time. It can’t be all that bad though, especially since Me, Myself and Irene cements itself into the “Jim Carrey is a zany fun lover” brand of moviegoing. I couldn’t imagine a worse time if I’d tried.
Jim Carrey leads the way in what I assume is the closest we’ll get to a biopic of his life. Narrated rather unconventionally and awfully by Rex Allen Jr., Me, Myself and Irene follows the story of state trooper Charlie Baileygates (Carrey) who finds himself coupled with a second personality in the form of Hank Evans. This schizophrenia leads to some inherently wacky fun times as the Baileygates/Evans tag-team find themselves on a road trip with Irene P. Waters (Renee Zellwegger). It’s not all as it seems of course, and the two soon find themselves on the run from corrupt cops, all the while dealing with Baileygates’ split personality.
What more can you really expect from Academy Award winner Peter Farrelly and brother Bobby Farrelly? They’re not exactly craftsmen who can look back upon their filmography with pride, especially not after they crafted the eagerly futile Hall Pass. Me, Myself and Irene is preposterous in both its situational comedy, its tone-deaf writing and the complacency of its direction. There’s no single scene that could suggest even a single aspect of unique spectacle or originality. Some of the situations Carrey and Zellwegger find themselves in are quite funny, but the writing is never up to the challenge of bringing out the humour. So much more could’ve been done to provide even a couple more laughs, but it falls into the path of stringent mundanity far too often.
There are times when the film sinks to almost B-Movie levels of quality. Carrey slaps on a dreadful Eastwood impression from time to time and heaves us through some horrible dialogue. A great deal of the jokes that involve Carrey’s slapstick ordeal have not stood the test of time. The whole era of 2000s comedy films grow ever weaker as I look back with hindsight. It’s not the ones I feel nostalgic for that have grown poorly though, it’s the ones I never had the chance to see. Me, Myself and Irene is dire entertainment, not a single major laugh to be had whatsoever.
