I Love You Phillip Morris (Review)

Jim Carrey doesn't get the credit he deserves. Sure, he’s done a few too many broad comedies over the years, but you can never accuse him of not trying. For every Fun With Dick and Jane or Ace Ventura he’s done something more ambitious, such as The Truman Show, Man on the Moon, or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Even misfires like The Number 23 (and what a misfire it is) hint at a Carrey willing to take risks. His latest film, I Love You Phillip Morris, gives him a character which plays to his cartoonish strengths and as a result Carrey gives one of his greatest performances.

His character, Steven Russell, could come off as a man who could never exist in this world or the next, but I Love You Phillip Morris is, in fact, based on a true story. Russell has grown up in a conservative environment, and he ended up marrying a normal Christian housewife (Leslie Mann) and living a plain life. However, he’s gay, an urge he finally gives in to after almost dying in a car accident. He ditches his wife, moves to Florida and becomes the full-on homosexual he’s always wanted to be.

Wanting to keep his high-flying lifestyle, Steven becomes a con artist. Eventually he is caught and sent to prison for his crimes, and there he meets Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor). The two fall in love instantly, and when they are finally forced apart Steven does all he can to make sure Morris is freed so that they may be together. Saying much more would not be fair, as the story takes so many twists and turns in its latter half that it all becomes a but absurd. So absurd, they’re all true.

I Love You Phillip Morris is a prime example of a character being far more interesting than the film he’s in. Carrey’s performance is brilliant, portraying a man who is able to put on a plethora of masks so that he may interact with many different people over the course of the day. It’s mind-boggling that a single human being lived so many different lives and had so many different identities, but Steven is anything but a normal human being. A good comparison might be to The Informant, as both films portray men who are more comfortable lying than telling the truth, and their stories are presented as goofy comedies.

Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, who wrote and directed this film, don’t exactly nail the pacing, and at times the film can grow a bit tiring. We feel as if we are watching the same exact thing over and over again, and while this is occasionally done for comedic effect it grows a bit tiresome. Quite honestly, I was shocked to see that the film was only 93 minutes long, as it's all so scatterbrained that at times it barely holds together. Multiple characters are arrested and go to jail countless times, and it grows stale quicker than Ficarra and Requa would probably like. This is their first directing gig (in the past they have written Bad Santa and the remake of Bad News Bears) and while the film is appropriately colorful and strange it can’t quite mask the other significant problems.

Nonetheless, I Love You Phillip Morris is still worth seeing, thanks to Carrey and McGregor. There’s an interesting “opposites attract” chemistry to the two of them, as Carrey plays Steven so over-the-top that he’s into the stratosphere, while McGregor mostly mutters his lines and always seems to sit there absolutely infatuated with the man he’s in love with. Their relationship is neither mocked nor exploited, and it’s understandable that everything Steven does he does so he can be with Phillip, no matter how misguided it may be.

It’s been a long, painful journey for I Love You Phillip Morris. It was filmed eons ago, first premiering at Sundance in 2009. For some perspective, this was the same festival where Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire was competing. That film was released to theaters in November 2009. I Love You Phillip Morris is just now getting a wide release. For a while, nobody would touch it with a 10-foot pole, no doubt because the two lead characters are (gasp) openly homosexual. Finally, and happily, I Love You Phillip Morris has been distributed to the public. It is far from a great film, but it’s appropriately wacky and entertaining enough for all who want to go see Jim Carry at the top of his game.

Rating:  (out of 4)