Me, Myself And Irene (Wide Screen) > Reviews > Hank and Charlie and Jim and Good Cop Bad Cop

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Indifferent to it
Story	Satisfactory
Characters / Performances	Satisfactory
Special Effects	Unmemorable
How does it compare to similar films?	Satisfactory

Advantages:	Zellweger
Disadvantages:	Carrey

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

One night on from writing about Jim Carrey's online presence, and it's time to do the same for one of the grating man's movies. This time Carrey plays a manic loner with a problem who comes through in the end (how unusual!) Starring alongside Renee Zellweger, Carrey plays a schizophrenic police officer whose darker side comes to the fore when he journeys across the States with Zellweger in tow but without his handy little pills available to him.

After Charlie's (the good cop) wife leaves him he undergoes a nervous breakdown and suddenly all his inbuilt aggression and Hank (the bad cop) comes evilly to the fore, doing all the nasty and reprehensible things that Charlie can only dream of.

Carrey was born (apparently) to play roles like this, with just the right amount of crazed rabid whacko periods to keep his wilder self satisfied, but it's actually the underrated Zellweger who gets most of the credits here. She was incredibly good in Bridget Jones' Diary with that scarily realistic English accent, and she's just as strong here, although she can act naturally with her standard American voice. She creates an interesting and absorbing relationship on screen with Carrey and gives as good as she gets while her crazed accomplice is whooping it up in a truly out there creation.

You rarely get much deep or soulful with Carrey, although Man In The Moon and The Truman Show were exceptions, and here he just clowns it up without a moment's pause for thought. He can only really do this sort of one dimensional thang with any real conviction and although you get the wildly distinctive parts of Hank and Charlie for your money, there's not a great deal of depth on show.

They could have done more with the idea and the themes, but then that wouldn't have been a Jim Carrey movie, and certainly Me Myself and Irene is one bloody funny movie.

Carrey insists on milking the idea for everything it's
worth and relishes playing the darker side, as he did to excess in The Mask. If anything, Hank is even more breathtakingly appalling than the green rubber faced one, and with friends like this, Irene and Charlie don't need enemies.

Despite myself, I actually quite like this film and can watch it an untold number of times without getting bored, because of the manic desperation of the Carrey muse, here totally uncontained and roaming free.

Having said all that, of course, I can't bear to let the man off scot free, and so away we go.

The worst thing about Jim Carrey is that he thinks he's the funniest man on the planet and has no doubts at all in his abilities. He gets carried away by this blind self admiration and has clearly never heard of the word understatement. Imagine Carrey in a Bergman movie - go on I dares you...

Credits

Starring:
Jim Carrey
Renee Zellweger
Chris Cooper
Robert Forster
Anthony Anderson
Lin Shaye
Danny Green
Jessica Harper
Richard Jenkins
Robert Foster

Director:
Bobby Farrelly
Peter Farrelly
Producer:
Bobby Farrelly
Bradley Thomas
Peter Farrelly
Screenwriter:
Bobby Farrelly
Peter Farrelly
Mike Cerrone
Cinematographer: Mark Irwin
Costume Designer: Pamela Withers
Editor: Christopher Greenbury
Narrator: Rex Allen Jr.