There are two Jim Carreys in the new gross-out farce Me, Myself & Irene , which does not make it doubly funny, only twice as stupid. This latest idiot-level wallow in sophomoric bad taste and Kindergarten Cinema 101 for the Mentally Challenged from the flatulence factory known as the Farrelly brothers may not be the worst movie of the year (did you see Battlefield Earth ?), but it is undeniably the trashiest.

In the vomitous tradition of every in-your-face Farrelly freak show from Dumb and Dumber to There's Something About Mary , this assault on the I.Q. knocks itself cross-eyed looking for new ways to shock, annoy and insult everyone in sight, and Mr. Carrey literally knocks himself out cold trying to make you laugh while you retch. Every attempt at comedy backfires like one of Mel Brooks' baked bean dinners, but you can't say it isn't noisy.

Mr. Carrey hits the ground running as Charlie, a mild-mannered Rhode Island state trooper with a split personality disorder. Charlie is such a benign oaf even the dogs in his neighborhood poop when they see him coming. (Lots of close-ups of dog poop, a Farrelly obsession.) He dreams of love, but he has about as much chance of scoring as I have lasting through a season of Survivor wide awake. In the food chain of life, Charlie is a bottom feeder. After his wife gives birth to three black babies and runs away with a black midget, Charlie just loses it. Mr. Carrey's lips curl inward like a baboon's, his eyes turn sideways, and he morphs into an aggressive, womanizing goathead named Hank.

In alter-ego mode, Hank suckles a nursing mother on a street corner, drives through a barbershop window with milk on his upper lip, and defecates on a neighbor's lawn. As long as he remembers to take his medication, he's a sappy Dr. Jekyll, losing his place in the supermarket line to kids with 400 pounds of Fruit Loops. When he forgets, he turns into a tough, obnoxious Mr. Hyde who addresses females with "Hold on there, Cheese Tits!" and calls an albino waiter a "giant Q-Tip."

Enter Irene, played by the charming Renée Zellweger, a girl on the lam from a gang of crooks for reasons that are as baffling as everything else in a Farrelly flick. Although the polite, politically correct Charlie is assigned to return her home on the back of his motorcycle, it is the crude, vulgar Hank who roughs her up like a chauvinist pig. Both personalities fall for Irene, causing much mayhem and confusion too raunchy to go into.

Even the deluded twentysomethings who applauded semen hair gel as inspired lunacy in Mary might have trouble with the level of taste in Irene . It's hard to cough up the same frat-house laughs when Hank goes to bed with a humongous rubber dildo and Charlie wakes up the next morning with a swollen prostate. Mr. Carrey does something nasty with a chicken; degrades lesbians, African-Americans and people in wheelchairs; and rises from his bed with an erection, misses his aim in the bathroom and pees on the walls, all while the groaning audience is expected to hemorrhage with guffaws. Instead, the contrived and relentless assault of sight gags, pratfalls and moron jokes are about as amusing as a swarm of mosquitoes carrying encephalitis to the Hamptons.

When Charlie finally tries to exorcise Hank by choking, socking and slapping himself all over the screen, Mr. Carrey makes Jerry Lewis having a fit seem like a study in subtle self-control. The feisty Ms. Zellweger, too canny to let on for a minute that this is anything but an expense-paid romp, looks like a campfire girl researching a school paper in an S&M bar. With his buzz cut and broken nose, and his face screwed into a permanent grimace, Mr. Carrey often looks uncannily like the Frankenstein monster. To watch him act, you are urged to revisit The Truman Show . To watch him in toilet training, see this fiasco and weep. The toilet figures more prominently in a Farrelly brothers movie than the plot, but in Me, Myself & Irene what you see in the toilet is not only double-ply Charmin. It's the shreds of Jim Carrey's wasted career.

The Chicken Who Got Away

Any movie about poultry stands a chance of laying an egg, but Chicken Run is a delightful 85-minute cartoon omelette, low enough in cholesterol to safely fill the needs of any diet. This is The Great Escape set in a chicken coop, created from clay by 40 animators and directed by Peter Lord and Nick Park, the British team responsible for the popular, Oscar-winning Wallace and Grommit shorts. Starring more than 300 chickens with perky personalities and dialogue to match, it's the goddamnedist thing since Bill and Coo .

Using chicken puppets in stop-motion speed, real props and three-dimensional sets, the film is a wonder to behold, but beyond the remarkable clay figures with their hand-painted feathers, the real thrill is their juxtaposition to the intricate surroundings. There's even a big musical production number, "Flip, Flop and Fly," in which a flotilla of plump hens boogie and frug with Rocky the Rhode Island Red, a rooster who cons them into believing he can teach them to fly (the voice of a bemused Mel Gibson). No better synchronization of animation and lovable figures in motion can be found, and a grand time is had by all.

Foreign to such entertainments, there is even a plot. The German concentration camp setting of movies like The Great Escape and Stalag 17 is now a bleak chicken farm in Yorkshire, England, where, if you don't lay, you end up on toast. The numbered rows of chicken coops under the guard tower are like the barracks at Auschwitz. The jackbooted commandant is a fiercely inhumane old gargoyle named Mrs. Tweedy (Miranda Richardson), solitary confinement is the coal bin, and the dreaded Nazi tanks are now the poultry trucks that come to cart the eggs of the exhausted prisoners to market.

"Chickens are the most stupid creatures on this planet," screeches the greedy, pernicious Mrs. Tweedy, who hatches her own fascist extermination plot to bolster profits by turning all of the chickens into pies. But there's not a dumb cluck in the compound, and everyone can relate to the fight for freedom and justice, even in a barnyard. There's gotta be more to life than laying eggs and getting plucked, stuffed and roasted, declares the prison's prize hen Ginger (Julia Sawahla from Absolutely Fabulous ), who courageously tries digging a tunnel with a real kitchen fork under the barbed-wire fences, but every escape from the cages of Tweedy's Farm is thwarted by attack dogs with a taste for drumsticks.

All seems lost until the arrival of Rocky, a flying circus rooster and a Yank with typical American flyboy arrogance. Mel Gibson has a field day with the role; his voice is a perfect counterpart to all the cockney hens and Scottish banties as Rocky falls for the independent Ginger and rescues the other doomed McNuggets from the ovens. One particularly exciting sequence inside the Rube Goldberg–like oven, where Ginger and Rocky are trapped in gravy and sealed inside a pie crust, stops the show. Lines like "I've seen some hard-boiled eggs in my time, but you're 20 minutes!" should be sentenced to hard labor on the poultry shelf, but most of the time Chicken Run entertains, instructs, involves and enchants.

Watching all those chickens running for their lives may put you off chicken for a while, but the movie is dazzling enough to make children cheer and intelligent enough to keep grown-ups awake-a rare work set in a historical context that will appeal to all ages and types, especially vegetarians.

No More Marlene,Just Sian Phillips

Sophistication triumphs over the mundane at the FireBird Café in the presence of Sian Phillips, one of the most glamorous, spirited and celebrated stars of the London stage. On this side of the Atlantic, she may be known as the ex-wife of Peter O'Toole, but in the West End she's won awards in everything from Shaw to Sondheim and played everyone from Mrs. Patrick Campbell and Elizabeth I to Virginia Woolf and the Duchess of Windsor, as well as a number of bald villainesses in science-fiction movies. Last year she showed us her magic in an all-too-brief run on Broadway as Marlene Dietrich. She calls her American cabaret debut Falling in Love Again and she does look uncannily like the lovely, legendary Marlene, but the gimmick ends there. Now she's back as herself, weaving dreams and casting spells of her very own design.

What to make of a vibrant, intelligent and deeply sensitive woman draped in gossamer, who adores the wit of Dorothy Parker, the ascerbic one-liners of Tallulah Bankhead, the heartbreaking lyrics of Lorenz Hart and the sonnets of William Shakespeare? In this act, she leaves no stone unturned-or, as Diana Rigg would say, no turn unstoned. With a wicked sense of humor, a worldly realm of life's experience to share and a voice with the throb of a mandolin, she explores the nuances of a repertoire that includes Edith Piaf, Billy Joel, Kurt Weill, Harold Arlen, George Gershwin, Joni Mitchell, Hoagy Carmichael, Amanda McBroom, Jacques Brel and the Bard himself. You can't say she's locking her windows and doors.

This is the first cabaret act in history that includes the "Willow Song" Desdemona sings before she's murdered in Othello by the mordant Moor. It's the audition piece Ms. Phillips performed at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art that launched her career, and the way she sings and acts it, she can make you swoon. "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" is a song she performed to rave reviews in the London production of Pal Joey and you immediately know why. "Ar Lan Y Mor" is a Welsh folk song she used to perform with her fellow Welsh countryman and pal, a guy who turned out to be Richard Burton. She's less persuasive on contemporary material, but the true warmth and wisdom of a woman who has seen a lot is more deeply revealed when she looks through a microscope at Nöel Coward's "Most Of Every Day" and finds lost innocence in gentler, less messy and disturbing times when "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square."

Soignée, dauntless, extraordinary, exemplary-one searches for special words not used since the days of Mabel Mercer to describe the beauty and polish of a diseuse like Sian Phillips. If you are interested in something beyond the ordinary run of cabaret fare, take the nearest taxi and experience her fast. You won't see anyone quite like her again anytime soon.

I don't say Frank Wildhorn is foolish-far from it. He isn't a genius. He is said to be criticproof. (But then, so is Danielle Steel, and so was Andrew Lloyd Webber, before time began to catch up with him.) My esteemed colleague John Simon, musing on popular taste and the anointing of Mr. Wildhorn as "Messiah to the Unwashed," pointed out in New York magazine that the only real test of artistic value "is the slow but true test of time."

Agreed! History will not treat Mr. Wildhorn's Jekyll and Hyde , The Scarlet Pimpernel and now The Civil War too kindly.

But meanwhile, the American musical is hitting rock bottom. Mr. Wildhorn seems to write an awful lot of skating music. His surging romantic ballads are actually very popular with professional skaters. They inspire triple toe-loops in sequins. His talent is for easy listening pop. He says so himself. His work, he told The New York Times , is "comfortable on the ear."

If a bland blur is comfortable (on the ear), then Mr. Wildhorn is a master. But is the traumatic history of America from slavery to Gettysburg comforting ? It's beyond argument, I think, that the Civil War amounts to something more significant than an easy-listening radio station. But let it pass. Mr. Wildhorn is an unapologetically proud populist. Let him explain the secret to his success:

"I always say I never do shows for the people," he told Playbill . "I do them with the people." Of the people, for the people and by the people rings a bell. But with ? What does that mean, exactly? Are "the people" his co-composers? "I've been able to make my passion their passion," he went on. "They hear it and love it."

Do they? The low camp Scarlet Pimpernel has yet to prove a popular success; on the other hand, the high camp Jekyll and Hyde is a hit. Moral: Always aim high. But whether the pious Civil War truly will prove popular is far from a sure thing. Piety doesn't sound like a fun night out on Broadway to me.

But what kind of a musical is Civil War ? It has no plot; it's essentially without any characters. "It's not a traditional show, but it's got what I would call a visual book," the show's co-author, Gregory Boyd, has explained. "Visual books" save on words. They're the equivalent to "comfortable on the ear." "We're trying to tell a story in a visual sort of way," he added, sounding a little tentative.

He means that Civil War is at center a bookless pseudo-docudrama with music and period photographs of soldiers and slaves. There are also the usual stock battle scenes performed in slow motion with lots of noise and smoke. In fact, the "visual book"-and the direction by Jerry Zaks, who did Smokey Joe's Cafe -is somewhat threadbare and dull. But let that pass. Where's the story? "There is no huge back story here," said the show's lyricist, Jack Murphy. Isn't the back story here the history of America? "We don't need one," Mr. Murphy continued. "People bring their own back stories to this thing."

All clear? The people are the co-composers; the book is to be seen; and everyone brings their own back stories to the show. Mr. Murphy explained: "You see a husband singing to his wife about loss. We all know what that is."

We're meant to project our own problems onto the Civil War. The creators of the show can therefore refer to loss-and honor, valor, death, whatever-as if they were creating quick, simplistic musical vignettes for MTV.

We're watching MTV on stage. It's why Civil War has barely a recognizable character-for none are needed. There are only easily identifiable generic types and the unearned emotion of mini-dramas. In an early battle scene, one young soldier kills another. "No!" he cries over the corpse. "He's my brother!" Obviously, we are meant to feel for a tragedy of war (but don't). A song follows: "Tell my father when you can/ I died a man." Fathers, brothers, issues of patriotic manhood, accidental fratricide-mighty themes; trivial outcome.

There are no memorable songs, no emotional connection, only a form of numbness. How could it be otherwise with clumsy, anodyne lyrics such as this from the inevitable love letter moment: "How I long for your touch like a lover will/ 'Cause I'm missing you/ God, I'm missing you, my Bill." Or this, sung by a slave couple who are separated when sold: "If prayin' were horses all of us would ride/ And ever I'd be by your side."

No authentic sense of time or period exists in Civil War . Mr. Wildhorn's folk, country and pop-rock for easy listening belong to the 90's of Michael Bolton, where everything sounds "heartbreakingly" the same. Or to the faux-diva, overwrought emotion of a Mariah Carey, where everything begins and ends in hysteria. Like the man says, bring your own back stories to the show.

With Broadway musicals, there's low and there's low. The new Broadway revue, The Gershwins' Fascinating Rhythm , is seriously, unsavably, unbelievably low . Directed by Mark Lamos and costumed by Paul Tazewell, whose names deserve to go down in infamy, the 90-minute show has been produced like some Las Vegas lounge act from the 1970's. They seem to have set out maniacally to sabotage and vulgarize the very elegance and wit they're supposed to be paying tribute to. They've tried to modernize the Gershwins. Why update the eternal? The Gershwins need no help from this coarse lot. They haven't even the respect to trust the material. Almost every single one of the 27 songs, many of them Gershwin standards-"Embraceable You," "Love Is Here to Stay," "Nice Work if You Can Get It"-has been ruined. Which clown on the production thought it would be a great idea to turn "Isn't It a Pity?" into a dyke duet? Why ask?

Just when things were going so well , we learn with regret that Marlene , the "musical play" about Dietrich starring Sian Phillips, has closed. It only goes to prove that not every British import is made of pure gold. This ghoulish exercise in kitsch and biopic name-dropping was written by Pam Gems, the second-rate British playwright who boldly sets out time and again to prove that sticking with movies is the best way.

Sample Dietrich dialogue: "Oh my God, how this mirror has aged!" "If the camera loves you, you are a star!" And, spoken wistfully to a photograph of Ernest Hemingway: "We had some good times, eh? Strolling down the Champs-Élysées."

I expect they did. The show actually opened with the startling sight of a severely depressed old woman mopping the stage with a bucket of water by her side. (Inspired direction by Sean Mathias.) At first, I thought she must be Marlene Dietrich in disguise for some weird reason, but the mop lady turns out to be a mute named Mutti, who likes to clean. So, we learned, does the meticulous Marlene. The immutably mute Mutti is Marlene's gofer and existential conscience. She hangs around the stage, very quietly. There's also Vivian, Marlene's devoted assistant who also happened to be a lesbian, rather like the girls in the Gershwin show. By gosh and golly, Vivian and Marlene get to kiss. Isn't that daring?

A lot of Act 2 was a Dietrich concert with Ms. Phillips impersonating Marlene in full bodystocking, with the usual off-key songs-e.g. "Honeysuckle Wose," "Falling in Love Again." I haven't a clue what the most distinguished Sian Phillips was doing in this miserable piece of icon exhumation. But someone must know, I guess.

Rest in peace.