The ads for Jim Carrey’s new film announce he’s going “from gentle to mental.” The slogan refers to Carrey’s character in Me, Myself & Irene, the new comedy from the dick/shit joke factory known as the Farrelly brothers, but it could just as easily apply to the $20 million man’s decision to sign on to Irene.  He’s reverted from (near) Oscar-worthy performances to the type of hyperactive, lowbrow comedy that made him a star.

In Irene, Carrey (Man on the Moon) plays Charlie, a well-adjusted Rhode Island State Trooper complete with typical cop moustache. Described as a really nice guy, Charlie also has a beautiful girlfriend named Layla (Traylor Howard, Two Guys and a Girl), and the film opens with the happy couple getting hitched. But things start to unravel for Charlie pretty quickly, as he gets his ass kicked by Shonte (Tony Cox, Friday), the newlyweds' genius black midget limo driver.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, as far as Charlie’s troubles are concerned. Nobody takes him seriously, from the neighbor that steals his newspaper, to his co-workers, to the citizens he’s supposed to serve and protect. Oh, and there’s the little matter of the severely tanned triplets that Layla has given birth to. Their names are Jamal, Lee Harvey and Shonte, Jr. - you do the math. Layla eventually leaves Charlie and the kids to live alone in their garage-sized house.

As a result of the entire world walking all over him, Charlie develops another personality - a rude, no-nonsense bad-ass named Hank - that emerges in a very funny scene set in a supermarket. As you can imagine, Carrey plus a split personality equals a lot of nifty physical comedy that nobody else in the world would be able to pull off. There’s a scene toward the end where Charlie is fighting Hank (or vice-versa), and Carrey does such a good job, it almost looks fake.

Unfortunately, Irene doesn’t quite measure up to any of the three previous Farrelly brothers' films (There’s Something About Mary, Kingpin and Carrey’s Dumb and Dumber). The main problem is with a convoluted storyline involving a woman named Irene (Renée Zellweger, The Bachelor) who Charlie/Hank must escort from Rhode Island to Massena, New York. Irene is embroiled in some sort of big business/police cover-up deal that’s way too detailed for this kind of film.  And there are no bust-your-gut-laughing scenes, like the Stiller vs. Dog set piece in Mary.

As a result, the film is flat in too many spots, and wastes time setting up its unnecessarily complicated plot when it could have had more gags about feces and urine. Irene was originally supposed to be about Siamese twins (played by Carrey and Woody Allen) that fall for the same girl, but that idea was scrapped when Allen didn’t sign on to the project. The Farrellys dusted off an old script that they co-wrote with an old friend (Mike Cerrone - he plays a police officer, too).

Like the previous three Farrelly films, Irene is chock-full of offensive material that is bound to piss a lot of people off. But the Farrellys are equal opportunity offenders and leave no stone unturned. They mock blacks, albinos, lesbians and just about any other group you can attach a name to. And there are sight gags a-plenty (like Charlie crammed onto the couch with his three gigantic black sons), which leaves Zellweger as the straight man in all of her scenes with her real-life beau Carrey (I think she sets some kind of film record for the most number of horror-struck double takes).

Irene is narrated by Rex Allen, Jr., who, like William Preston Robertson in Raising Arizona and Sam Neill in The Big Lebowski, uses a slow Southern drawl to tell the story via flashback. The film also features cameo appearances by tennis pin-up princess Anna Kournikova and former Boston Bruin puck-head Cam Neely. Sadly, Farrelly staple Lin Shaye (she’s the one who French-kissed the dog in Mary) appears briefly in only one scene.

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