BEFORE: Another form of mental illness explored tonight by Jim Carrey - multiple personality disorder. But it's one that Hollywood often mistakenly calls "schizophrenia" - which I believe is a totally different thing. Like "Dumb & Dumber", this was written and directed by the Farrelly Brothers.
THE PLOT: A nice guy cop with multiple personality disorder must protect a woman on the run from a corrupt ex-boyfriend and his associates.
AFTER: Sure enough, many times during this film, Jim Carrey's character is called a "schizo"...grrr, that's a pet peeve of mine. No Hollywood screenwriter ever takes the time to look up the symptoms of schizophrenia, which commonly manifests itself in audio hallucinations, paranoid delusions, and disorganized speech or thinking. It's a common enough mistake, but now that we have the internet, there are no more excuses - take a few minutes and look it up!
As stated, Jim Carrey's character, Charlie Baileygates has MPD, commonly called "split personality" - the second persona, Hank, surfaces whenever life gets him down, or he's in some kind of trouble. You know all those petty little annoyances, like someone cutting ahead of you in line, or denting your car, or just laughing at you? That's when Hank comes out to play - but he's an Alpha male with a gravelly Clint Eastwood voice, and he over-reacts, going right into fight mode.
The real reason for Hank's existence, is supposedly Charlie getting dumped by his wife and raising three children that are not genetically his (obviously, since they're African-American) but since the reality of his situation is too much for him to bear, he buries all of his negative emotions down deep. Of course that's not constructive, in fact it leads to all of Hank's DE-structive behavior.
It's actually an interesting concept for a screenplay, and a unique acting challenge - Carrey has to play two distinct sides of the same man's personality, but with different voices, different mannerisms, and different goals. Late in the film we see Carrey's two characters literally wrestling for control of his body - a trick I've only seen pulled off in two other movies - "All of Me" and "Fight Club". (Oh, I forgot, I'm not supposed to talk about "Fight Club"...)
Unfortunately, any insight into mental gymnastics or Cartesian dualism is pretty much negated by a succession of dick jokes, ass jokes, and other third-grade toilet-level humor. The bits with the dead cow didn't seem to connect to anything else, for example, nor did making fun of albinos, midgets, or Rhode Islanders. A lot of that just seemed like random mean-spiritedness.
On the positive side, I'll give points for using the great Junior Brown song "Highway Patrol" as an opening theme. Sure, it's a bit on the nose, but he's one of the few Country/Western acts I can tolerate. (Of course, my favorite Junior Brown song is "My Wife Thinks You're Dead", but that's another story...check it out if you get a chance though)
I'll rate this one just slightly above "Dumb & Dumber". Though there are parts of the plot that I just didn't understand - what was the actual crime/conspiracy going on? Was another mental patient inter-state road trip really necessary? What was the point of Charlie getting plastic surgery on his chin? And didn't Charlie's kids ever ask about their real father? I mean, they were portrayed as geniuses, but did they never once ask how their father was white? And why did the albino have a telescope on his glasses? There were so many little plot threads that never went anywhere...
Also starring Renee Zellweger (last seen in "Leatherheads"), Richard Jenkins (last seen in "Blue Steel"), Chris Cooper (last seen in "Money Train"), Robert Forster (last seen in "Firewall"), Anthony Anderson (last seen in "Life"), with cameos from Traylor Howard, Lenny Clarke (last seen in "Fever Pitch"), Tony Cox (last seen in "Blankman"), and apparently everyone the Farrelly brothers have ever met...
RATING: 4 out of 10 rum + cokes
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