Movie Review - 'I Love You Phillip Morris'

I Love You Phillip Morris Starring Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor Directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa Rated R

Jim Carrey plays Steven Russell, a gay man who has been hiding behind a child, a wife, and a job after years of inadequacy due to the discovery of his adoption as a boy. After a brush with death, Steven loudly proclaims that he is going to be “a fag!” and promptly leaps out of the closet. There’s only one problem, you can take the man out of the lie, but you can’t take the lie out of the man. Steven’s addiction to the façade and the plush extravagances of the gay lifestyle lead him into the world of credit fraud, and ultimately, jail. It is during his first stay in prison where he meets Phillip Morris, played by Ewan McGregor. The two almost instantly fall in love, and Steven promises Phillip that no matter what, they will never be apart. Steven must then strive to keep his vow while struggling with his compulsions and growing skill as a brilliant con man.

I Love You Phillip Morris is, at its core, a beautifully crafted love story. Surrounding this central theme is a boatload of vulgarity, sex, and phalluses. All of this, however, comes off as sweetly hilarious due to the film’s overall tone of the joy of love and the thrill of adventure. It is because of this, and no doubt Glenn Ficarra and John Requa’s vision, that Phillip Morris is a success. Well, that, and the performances.

McGregor’s portrayal of a sweet, caring, but somewhat damaged, and initially introverted Phillip, is stunningly sincere. He fully embraced this character with such truth and groundedness that the actor was completely indistinguishable from the man we were watching fall madly in love, and become madly betrayed.

Carrey contributes greatly to the story’s tone and telling with his unique brand of comedic flexibility combined with that strange and effective way he can break your heart with those deep brown eyes. The only shortcoming is that he is clearly always Jim Carrey. His southern accent drifts from time to time revealing that cartoonish voice we have come to associate with his larger than life performances, and his wild body language break us from the reality of the circumstances. The story and the script were funny enough on their own without the Carrey-style embellishment. After Spotless Mind we know what this actor can do, it would have done both him and the directors well to trust themselves and the script in front of them. Never the less, Carrey does have some brilliant moments, especially during his cons, that have the audience gripping their seat and laughing at the same time.

The film loses some of its “real life” validity and coherence during some moments when it fails to fully explain how some of Steven’s cons actually worked. At first it seemed as though he was merely surviving on dumb luck, and then somewhere along the line he got good at it. But how he got good at it, or even how he managed to pull it off at all remains unexplained. In stead, the film favors the love story and an implied struggle for identity that Steven may or may not be experiencing. These ambiguities slow the locomotive that could have been this film if we had been allowed to understand more of who this man was and how he thought.

That said, this film is fun, honest, and simple. The humor is solid and consistent, even during the most desolate of circumstances, and the story is tremendously entertaining. This is one of the only films that I can honestly say should have been longer. I Love You Phillip Morris is a well-constructed, well-executed comedy that presents a very original type of hero. And possibly the best thing about the movie is that the protagonist is just as uncompromising as the film itself: uncompromisingly, unfloundingingly, unshakably, yet somehow not garish or obtrusively gay. It is a film about love, humanity, and promises, and it isn’t afraid to be itself.