Me, Myself & Irene (Rental) (2000) |
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Me, Myself & Irene (Rental) (2000) |
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| General | Extras | ||
| Category | Comedy | None | |
| Rating |
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| Year Of Production | 2000 | ||
| Running Time | 111:44 | ||
| RSDL / Flipper | No/No | Cast & Crew | |
| Start Up | Menu | ||
| Region Coding | 2,4 | Directed By |
Bobby Farrelly Peter Farrelly |
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Studio
Distributor |
 Twentieth Century Fox |
Starring |
Jim Carrey Renee Zellweger Chris Cooper Robert Forster Richard Jenkins |
| Case | Amaray-Transparent | ||
| RPI | Rental | Music |
Pete Yorn Lee Scott |
| Video | Audio | ||
| Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None | English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) | |
| Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 1.85:1 | ||
| 16x9 Enhancement |
 |
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| Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
| Original Aspect Ratio | 1.85:1 | Miscellaneous | |
| Jacket Pictures | No | ||
| Subtitles | English for the Hearing Impaired | Smoking | Yes |
| Annoying Product Placement | Yes, mildly | ||
| Action In or After Credits | Yes, during and after | ||
Carrey plays Charlie Baileygates, a Rhode Island State Trooper. When the love of Charlie's life leaves him with newborn triplets (hilariously played by Anthony Anderson, Mongo Brownlee and Jerod Mixon), Charlie takes it unnaturally in his stride, despite the fact that the children are born black, and Charlie and his wife are most assuredly white. Thus begins a lifetime of internalizing his anger, and avoiding confrontation at all costs, most of all at cost to his dignity. But things go too far, and from the buried anguish is born Hank, an alternate personality who isn't shy in coming forward, all guns blazing. After consulting professional help and medication to control Hank, Charlie is sent by his boss (Robert Forster) on an errand: take a witness, Irene (Renee Zellweger) across the country to New York, where she is needed in an investigation (which just happens to be concerning organized crime). Of course, there are people who don't want to see her get there (namely a crooked cop played by Chris Cooper), and of course Charlie loses his medication on the way, and of course Charlie and Hank fight for the affections of the beautiful Irene along the way.
From a distance, this is an attempt from the Farrelly brothers at a madcap, comic, romantic, thriller road movie, but up close, the plot lacks direction, and any attempt at generating any tension resulting from the chase of our heroes is lost as endless tangents and side tracks bleed any sort of plot development. This is unfortunate: Renee Zellweger (Jerry Maguire) did little more than stand around looking pretty, and the dependable Chris Cooper (The Patriot) the same, but angry. With the exception of the triplets who steal each scene they're in, this leaves Carrey to drive the movie, and he really only has one act to play here: the "beat himself up" act that fans have all seen before in Liar, Liar. Don't get me wrong: there are more than a few laughs here (of the usual toilet / poo / back door variety), and some of them had me in stitches, but they were too few and far between, and you're forced to watch a little too many Charlie/Hank facial contortions in the meantime. Coming in at just under two hours, the feature seemed a lot longer, and lack of pace and timing means comic death, in my humble opinion.
This is a sharp and well detailed effort. There were no instances of grain that I could see, and shadow detail was excellent, although with all scenes bar one or two set outside and with strong daylight, there weren't many shadows to speak of.
Being a comedy, the colour palette is bright to the point of garishness, and it is wonderfully represented without the merest hint of oversaturation. The countryside through which Charlie and Irene travel is lush, green, and beautiful. Blacks are also deep, and their level is spot on.
As expected, there were no problems with film artefacts, and I noticed no MPEG artefacts. There were, though, plenty of instances of aliasing, liberally sprinkled throughout the feature. The major culprits were the roof shingles of Charlie's house (at 7:13, 21:22 and 100:05) car front grilles (at 15:40, 19:50 and 49:55) and on a train (at varying instances between 87:57 and 92:35). There were also numerous other minor examples such as on blinds and on patterned clothing, of which there was plenty.
| Sharpness |  |
| Shadow Detail | |
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| Grain/Pixelization | |
| Film-To-Video Artefacts | |
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The only dialogue that was occasionally difficult to hear was that of Hank: to differentiate between his two characters, Carrey uses something of a low whisper for his Mr Hyde, and this occasionally got a little lost in the surrounding sounds. Audio sync was perfect.
Original music is credited to Lee Scott and Pete Yorn, but for the life of me, I can't recall a bar of it. In fact, my notes reveal my recollection to be that there was no score per se, but rather, plenty of great songs from the likes of Foo Fighters, Smash Mouth, XTC and Ben Folds Five.
Considering the fact that this is a comedy, and that there isn't a hell of a lot in the way of action, the surround channels were used beautifully to draw me into the somewhat bizarre world of the movie. There was nothing jaw-dropping, but subtle directional effects such as cars driving off into the distance, or the sounds of insect and birds in the many outdoor scenes really added to the atmosphere. The surrounds come into their own late in the movie with the introduction of a helicopter to the plot.
As with the surrounds, there were no great instances of house-shaking subwoofer use, but it was lightly and judiciously used throughout much of the movie. With much of the music in the movie being contemporary rock, it supported the bass there quite nicely. The sub also gave a nice rumbling for the many scenes featuring motorbikes, as well as for the helicopter mentioned above.
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| Surround Channel Use | |
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NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
The Region 4 rental version of this disc misses out on;
| Video | |
| Audio | |
| Extras |  |
| Plot | |
| Overall | |
| Review Equipment | |
| DVD | Toshiba 2109, using S-Video output |
| Display | Sony Trinitron Wega (80cm). Calibrated with AVIA Guide To Home Theatre. This display device is 16x9 capable. |
| Audio Decoder | Built in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with AVIA Guide To Home Theatre. |
| Amplification | Pioneer VSX-D608 |
| Speakers | Front: Yamaha NS10M, Rear: Wharfedale Diamond 7.1, Center: Wharfedale Sapphire, Sub: Aaron 120W |