Me, Myself and Irene

Herald rating: * * *

Cast: Jim Carrey, Renee Zellweger

Directors: Peter and Bobby Farrelly

Rating: Raw (offensive language, sexual references)
Running Time: 116 minutes

Screening: Village, Hoyts and Berkeley cinemas
Review: Russell Baillie

I suppose we have to blame the Academy. If only they had given Carrey something, anything, for his dramatic roles in The Truman Show or Man on the Moon, we wouldn't be suffering through another bout of old Carrey.

Yes, despite the involvement of the Farrelly brothers - who made their gross-out gags serve a sweet story in their previous There's Something About Mary - this is hello again to that comedian formerly known as Ace Ventura.

In case you hadn't heard, he's playing Charlie Baileygates, a motorcycle cop trooper who's mild-mannered in the extreme. He just gets on with it when his wife, after giving birth to black triplets, leaves him for their father - a Mensa member dwarf - leaving Charlie to raise the three, who grow up to be trash-talkin' genius-level homeboys.

But his suppressed rage surfaces in "Hank", an alter-ego who comes on as if Carrey is channelling Dirty Harry. Actually, make that a Really Very Dirty Harry.

Just as he's trying to get Hank under control through medication, he's assigned to escort Irene (Zellweger, playing the decorative straight-woman), who has been caught up in some nasty business, to upstate New York. Soon the pair are on the lam together, being chased cross-country by bad guys and crooked cops.

Meanwhile, Irene has acquired a peculiar rivalry for her affections. That's probably all good news if you just sneak in over the age rating restriction.

But there's still something missing here. Yes, the story is beyond ropey, an excuse for the Farrellys to connect the dots between their bad-taste stunts - a random audit of which would include chicken abuse, a death-defying cow, breast milk, an albino waiter, a large marital aid, and - possibly worst of all - Carrey's appalling buzzcut.

Props aside, it feels like there's a lead weight attached to many of the scenes, as if the Farrelly are trying to extract every last drop out of Carrey's gurning. And gurn he does, pulling some of the best faces of his face-pulling career.

The result is that the energy levels go through long, tiresome sags and laughs ring hollow, though every time Charlie's boys - Jamall, Lee Harvey and Shonte jun - turn up they're enough of a booster shot to make you suspect that any sequel should be about them.

Yes, it uses the term "schizophrenia" and its derivations just as a lot of woefully misinformed people use them.

But Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde wasn't exactly a mental illness textbook either and whoever it offends would be an issue only to those who are never going to see it. For those who might, be warned that Irene is no Mary. Neither does it quite do it in the tasteless low-brow idiocy department like Carrey's previous Farrelly flick, Dumb and Dumber.

In the end, perhaps the funniest thing about Me Myself and Irene isn't on screen.

It's the feeling that while the firm of Farrelly, Farrelly and Carrey helped to invent the New Grossness in screen comedy, they seem bored by it. They might still play a good offensive game but maybe their hearts just aren't in it.