Jim Carrey plays two men in one body in Me, Myself & Irene, and the Farrelly brothers ask the audience to laugh at both. Charlie Baileygates is a Rhode Island state trooper who absorbs abuse for years — from his wife Layla, from the town, from everyone — until his mind splits and produces Hank Evans, a rude, violent persona who handles every fight Charlie won’t. The film runs 117 minutes and sold itself with one tagline: “From gentle to mental.”
Trailer, via FoxConnect.
Charlie Baileygates and the Triplets
The setup is the movie’s meanest stretch. Layla cheats on Charlie almost immediately after their wedding with their limo chauffeur, Shonté, a black little person with a genius-level IQ. Charlie denies it even after she gives birth to biracial triplets — Jamal, Lee Harvey and Shonté Jr. — who also appear to be geniuses. Layla then leaves with Shonté and abandons the children, and Charlie raises them as his own.
Hank Evans Arrives
Those boys love Charlie. The rest of the town does not, and the film treats his years of mistreatment as the seed of the break. Hank surfaces whenever Charlie is under extreme stress, and a psychiatrist prescribes medication to keep him down. That’s the whole engine of the movie: a pill bottle standing between one man and the other man living inside him.
The Road to Massena
Charlie’s commanding officer, believing he needs a vacation, orders him to escort Irene Waters from Rhode Island to Massena, New York, where she allegedly committed a hit-and-run. Irene says her mob-connected ex-boyfriend Dickie made the accusation up to stop her from telling authorities about his illegal activities. Charlie doesn’t know the department plans to fire him the moment he gets back.
In Massena he hands Irene to two EPA agents. A hitman with a contract on her kills one of them. She finds Charlie, they run, and his medication gets left behind — so Hank comes out often, and Charlie gets blamed for a murder he didn’t commit. FBI agents chase them. So do Agent Boshane and Colonel Partington.
What Carrey and Zellweger Are Working With
Carrey gets the flashier half of the deal, and he takes it. Hank is a performance of pure release, and the film’s comedy depends on Carrey selling the switch without a beat of hesitation. Renée Zellweger’s Irene has to be the sane center of a movie that keeps spinning, and she plays it straight, which is the right call. Chris Cooper, Robert Forster and Richard Jenkins fill out the cast, with Anthony Anderson and Jerod Mixon as two of Charlie’s sons.
The Farrelly Brothers, Two Years After Dumb and Dumber
This was the Farrelly brothers’ second film with Carrey, after Dumb and Dumber in 1994, and the drop between them is steep. Filming ran from May 11 to July 29, 1999, across Rhode Island and Vermont. 20th Century Fox released the film on June 23, 2000. It made money. It also drew mixed reviews, and the split is easy to understand.
Why the Joke Wears Out
The premise has one move: Charlie is polite, Hank is not, and the movie repeats that contrast until the road trip takes over. Mental illness here is a punchline and a plot device, never a condition anyone takes seriously, and the film’s ugliest material — the triplets, the racial jokes built into their conception — is played for a laugh the script never earns. The tagline is honest about the ambition. Gentle to mental is the entire arc.
What holds up is Carrey’s commitment and Zellweger’s grounding. What doesn’t is everything around them. Me, Myself & Irene wants to be a black comedy about a man coming apart and settles for a sketch stretched to 117 minutes.
KEY FACTS BOX
- Title: Me, Myself & Irene (2000)
- Directors: Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly
- Writers: Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly, Mike Cerrone
- Runtime: 117 minutes
- Genre: Comedy
- Tagline: “From gentle to mental.”
- Filming: May 11 – July 29, 1999, in Rhode Island and Vermont
- Release: June 23, 2000, by 20th Century Fox
- Score: 4.7/10
The Farrelly brothers got a box office success and a mixed critical reception out of the same movie, and both reactions are fair. Carrey and Zellweger are worth the ticket. The script around them isn’t.
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