Herald rating: * * *
Cast: Rachel Griffiths, David Roberts, Sandy Winton Director: Pip Karmel
Rating: M (sex scenes, offensive language)
Running time: 104 mins
Screening: Village, Hoyts, Berkeley cinemas now
Review: Tim Watkin
Me Myself I is the sort of film that will receive top reviews in the women's magazines, but it's better
than that. Not a lot better, but better.
The fact that it's a bit smarter than it might have been and doesn't try too hard is, in large part, a credit to Griffiths (Muriel's Wedding, Hilary and Jackie), who plays two versions of Pamela Drury in this It's a Wonderful Life meets Bridget Jones, what-if story. When she's blowing dust off her condom or wiping her tears with her stuffed kangaroo, this is a story with potential.
Drury is a well-travelled, successful journalist bristling with awards and single angst. She has the career but missed the guy. And she knows just which guy - Mr Robert Dickson, who she dumped years ago.
Then one day she's knocked down in the street by her parallel self - the one who married Dicko - and single Pamela finds herself living the life that might have been with hubby and kids.
Working Pamela is doing an investigation into what young girls want from life, while wife Pamela is doing a part-time puff piece on the modern woman who wants it all.
The director's message is supposed to be that it's not circumstance that makes you happy, it's your attitude. Which is fine as far as it goes, but the underlying, seemingly unintentional, message says you're better off as the successful single. The wife doesn't score a new career but, by the end of the movie, the single woman finds a man to make her happy. Which kind of undermines the "circumstances don't matter" point and wimps on what could have been a more challenging ending.
The flip-side of Griffiths' believable, dominant performance in all but three scenes is that she doesn't quite make you care much about poor Pamela. Or perhaps it's just that there's little that is distinctive about her character. Or perhaps it's hard to draw out emotion when the lead's core relationship is with herself.
Or perhaps it's that this is just one woman's fretting, whereas in It's a Wonderful Life, a community depends on Jimmy Stewart's choices.
There are many reasons why, but the end result is a film that has some smarts but not enough heart.
