Me, Myself & Irene (2000)

Me, Myself & Irene arrives from 2000 as a Farrelly brothers slapstick vehicle for Jim Carrey's dual turn as a meek Rhode Island trooper and his aggressive alter ego. The film has no interest in social instruction; its comic engine is crude provocation, and its treatment of identity is the stuff of broad farce. The supporting cast includes Anthony Anderson and a trio of biracial triplets, but their presence functions as setup for stereotype-driven punchlines about a black midget and genius children. That is not representation with intent. It is demographic shorthand for a joke.

The gender politics are equally pre-modern. Irene is a damsel escorted, kidnapped, and finally proposed to, a romantic prize whose agency is mostly logistical. No LGBTQ themes surface. Race is a punchline, not a consciousness. The EPA agents are corrupt plot furniture, offering no environmental sermon. There is no economic critique, no anti-capitalist ire, and no body-positivity gesture. The film's humor often trades on physical mockery, which places it at a comfortable distance from contemporary sensitivity.

Where the film brushes against modern neurodivergence discourse, it does so backward. Charlie's dissociative identity disorder is played for slapstick, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness formally objected to the conflation of schizophrenia with split personality. That is not a sensitive portrait of neurodivergence; it is a punchline with a diagnosis attached. The film offers no revisionist history and no lecturing. It is a box office success from a different cultural moment, and it earns its low classification through sheer indifference to the pieties that would arrive later.