Me, Myself and Irene

Lunacy is so much a part of Jim Carrey’s basic screen persona that a story in which he achieves sanity and balance is hard-pressed to avoid lacerating self-mockery. And the writing/directing Farrelly brothers seem to put so much of their energy into brutal jokes about dwarf geniuses, anal sex, and gleeful sadism that the preachments about achieving psychic balance smack of a cynicism that is both barbaric and juvenile. The one true wonder in all this is Renee Zellweger (as Irene), navigating a characterization written as victim and pawn of unripened male fantasies, and finding ways to maintain an integrity that no one in the film seems to really recognize.