Review of Me Myself & Irene

Introduction

‘Me, Myself and Irene’ reunites Jim Carrey and the Farelly Brothers for another comedy outing. Their previous movie together had been the amazingly successful ‘Dumb and Dumber’ in 1994 so this would seem to be a recipe for success.

Carrey is Charlie Baileygates, a happy go lucky Rhode Island state trooper who has never been the same since his wife left him. Charlie took it all on the chin and went about bringing up their 3 children but since that day he has avoided confrontation at any cost, usually his self esteem. That is until one day when something inside Charlie snaps and a crazy and mean alter ego, called Hank, emerges. Charlie keeps Hank in check with medication but when he has to escort a beautiful woman, Irene, up state to New York he loses his medication and so begin an adventure with both Hank and Charlie falling for Irene.

This movie got some harsh criticism when it was released at the cinema in September last year, with some critics stating that this movie was one to many for the Farelly Brothers but being a huge Dumb and Dumber fan I took the plunge nonetheless.

Video

A top draw anamorphic transfer as is fast becoming the norm with all new region 1 releases. Sharp, detailed and clean as a whistle. Nothing to fault here at all.

Audio

As you would expect from a new movie it’s got a top notch Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack which excels, even if most of the movie is dialogue focused. The soundtrack music is particularly well presented and overall I couldn’t fault the audio package at all.

The music tracks from the movie are great to listen too, so much so that it’s definitely worthwhile purchasing the soundtrack CD.

Features

A bumper pack of extras which include trailers, TV spots, Foo Fighters music video for the track “Breakout”, a series of “making of” vignettes each showing how a specific scene was filmed (with an option to enable branching into these scenes in much the same way you could on The Matrix), a 6 minute featurette, a stills gallery, 10 deleted scenes (most of which are very amusing) and a commentary track from the Directors.

In particular the “making of” vignettes are very interesting as is the commentary track. Also look out for some hidden out takes on the deleted scenes page which are a great laugh if all too short at a little over 1 minute long. Another nice little feature is the menu screen, leave it alone for a few minutes and Charlie’s alter ego, Hank, comes along to liven things up a little.

Conclusion

So what we have here is a tale of boy marries girl, girl runs off with the chauffeur, boy suffers from ‘advance delusionary schizophrenia with involuntary narcissistic rage’, boys fall for girl, girl gets in trouble with the mob, boys get in trouble with each other and a large cow.

Talking about this movie is tricky as I wouldn’t want to give away any of the laughs but suffice to say I almost p***ed myself laughing, which is always a good sign when talking about comedies. I haven’t laughed so much in a long long time. In fact at one point my flatmate poked his head around my door to make sure I was allright. Sure I’m not talking about constant hilarity here but the laughs are well paced enough to keep you going throughout the movie with some truly side splitting moments along the way.

The humour is somewhat more adult in parts that Dumb and Dumber ever was and I think this is part of the reason why it’s so successful. Being an adult, so I’m told, I found myself identifying with certain parts in the movie (even parts I’d rather not identify with) and this just added to the humour even more. I wouldn’t advise letting small kids watch this movie unless you want to explain allot of very awkward situations to them afterwards :).

This type of role was written for Carey and he is simply superb. No matter how annoying you might find the guy you can’t help but laugh at him. When it comes to this kind of slapstic/grossout humour no one does it better. Quite simply the guy is a genius. The way he switches between characters is superb and I can’t think of anyone else who could have pulled this off anywhere near as good. The love interest, Irene, is played superbly by Renée Zellweger. She is the perfect counterbalance to the madcap Carey and, whilst not stunningly beautiful, has a certain captivating something about here that makes her more watchable as the movie progresses.

I couldn’t talk about the cast without mentioning Anthony Anderson, Mongo Brownlee and Jerod Mixon who in turn play Charlie’s 3 children Jamaal, Lee Harvey and Shonte Jr. The scenes involving these three had me in stitches. Charlie’s kids are coloured (see movie, don’t’ want to spoil it) and are extremely bright, to the point of each one being an absolute genius. Now bring these children up watching Richard Pryor on the TV and you’ve got 3 hilarious characters.

To the critics that said this was one movie to far for the Farelly Brothers I would suggest they not forget that movies are all about entertainment and I haven’t been this well entertained in absolutely ages.

An all round top notch DVD release with some genuine thought showing in the extras, possibly the funniest movie I’ve ever seen.