I Love You Phillip Morris (15)

Alison Rowat's Review

There aren’t many Hollywood leading men who could carry off hot pants, fishnets and killer heels. Not really a job for your Christian Bales and Russell Crowes, that one. Just as well, then, that the snake-hipped Jim Carrey was available for I Love You Phillip Morris, the outrageous, true, and highly entertaining tale of a gay conman who found love, lost his head, and made a career of escaping from prison.

On a scale of comedy running from light to dark, Glenn Ficarra and John Requa’s picture is at the point where you’d be hard pushed to see a hand in front of your face. Be aware that this is the same duo that made Bad Santa, a film that did for the Christmas spirit what Stalin did for freedom of information. They also, mind you, wrote the silly and sweet Cats & Dogs.

I Love You Phillip Morris is another attempt to find their rightful comedy place. It’s not wholly successful. The tone can be as uneven as the pace, and the story runs out of puff halfway through. But it has an endearing streak of daftness, a terrific, career ¬rejuvenating performance from Carrey, and Ewan McGregor looking like Frank McAvennie and sounding like Forrest Gump. How could one resist a peek?

The picture is based on the story of Steven Russell as told in Steven McVicker’s book. When we meet Russell, played by Carrey, he’s a fine, upstanding Texas citizen, a husband to Debbie (Knocked Up’s Leslie Mann getting the best out of another criminally small role), a dad, churchgoer, and police officer. Not long after, in fairly remarkable fashion, the picture reveals another side to Russell’s life.

It takes an accident to make Russell decide he doesn’t want to live this double life any more. So he embarks on another double life as a conman, which lands him in prison for insurance fraud. It’s here he meets Phillip (Ewan McGregor).

I Love You Phillip Morris delights in taking swipes at the US justice system. Its hero is celebrated as a clever, loveable rogue. Since the story wouldn’t work otherwise, his crimes have no obvious victims. Even on the wilder side of comedy, few audiences are going to sympathise for long with an out-and-out wrong ’un.

One escapade follows another as Russell tries to find enough money to keep himself and Morris in a style to which they are unaccustomed. With each imprisonment comes a new escape plan, which is where those hot pants come in. Like Carrey, the wardrobe department for I Love You Phillip Morris is a little short on restraint. Elsewhere, a pair of net briefs feature. One wonders what Ficarra and Requa gave the cast by way of direction besides “just go for it, then go for it some more”. The line between bad taste and good is crossed often and with glee, and there is a lot of riotous fun to be had as Carrey ramps up the madness that is consuming his character.

McGregor is soon sidelined in what inevitably becomes The Carrey Show. No bad thing given the unfortunate hairdo the Scot has been given (think Jonathan Watson doing Frankie Boy on Only An Excuse), and that hit-and-miss American accent of his. Still, he makes a winning sidekick to Carrey, portraying Morris as a gentle, easily led character.

It is one of the toughest gigs in comedy to play opposite the star of Bruce Almighty, Liar Liar, and The Cable Guy. Carrey at full speed makes hyperactive toddlers on a sugar rush look like Zen masters. While that can sometimes be rather wearing, you can always rely on him to never be boring. True to form, he throws himself into the part of Russell as if the future of the solar system depended on it.

Crucially, he is determined to do the right, rounded thing by such a complex character. Until now, I Love You Phillip Morris has attracted attention largely because it features mainstream stars playing a gay couple. Incredible that after so many precedents (Kiss of the Spider Woman, My Own Private Idaho, Philadelphia, etc) that it should still be considered daring for straight actors to take on less than straight roles. Carrey takes that dare and runs with it to some surprising places.

In one long, electrifying segment, set in a company where Russell has conned his way into the chief financial officer’s post, he makes you wonder if such a restless soul and whirring mind could ever be happy. Hell, for Russell, is the company of normal, everyday, people. To him, that’s the most depressing, inescapable jail of all.

It takes quite a talent to show all that between falling down escalators and wearing fishnets. Carrey might be the king of court jesters, but there’s a serious, and seriously good, actor in there too. This picture confirms it.

Paul Greenwood's Review

Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor star in this apparently true story of conman Steven Russell and the love of his life, Phillip Morris, which has been brought to the screen as a breezy and colourful comedy.

After some largely irrelevant detail about Steven (Carrey) being rejected by his birth mother, we learn that he’s a happily married policeman and family man. After a serious car accident, he quits his job and announces that he’s gay, leaving his wife and family for a new life in Florida.

But it’s an expensive lifestyle and he’s forced to become a con artist in order to fund it, which eventually lands him in prison when the law catches up with him. This is where he meets Phillip Morris (McGregor) and romance quickly blossoms between the pair.

Steven is released but Phillip is still inside, leading Steven to pose as a lawyer to get Phillip out. Remarkably, he’s then able to get a job as the CEO of a major company, allowing him to commit further massive fraud to fund their life together.

“This really happened. It really did,” is the film’s opening gambit, but while it’s all rather fanciful it’s still somehow strangely tedious, and with lots of text at the end to explain what happened to the characters, essentially pointless.

The main problem is that while it finds moderate success as a con caper, it utterly fails to convince as a love story, due mainly to the fact that Phillip Morris has no personality to speak of.

He’s barely a character, but the blame for this can’t really be placed on McGregor, although he doesn’t do very much to enliven him.

Carrey camps it up and whatever entertainment value there is comes solely from his typically flamboyant performance, one that combines his trademark gurning with some genuine empathy.

To the film’s credit, it is mildly subversive at points, with wild shifts in tone that take it from a fluffy comedy through some serious handbrake turns, before finding its way back to comedy again. Just don’t go looking for too many laughs along the way.