I Love You Phillip Morris
The movie theater is a dramatically polarizing place for me. It either confirms my faith in humanity or completely destroys it. The day I saw "I Love You Phillip Morris," I was experiencing the latter.
The largely geriatric audience was noisily gnashing on popcorn and meeting each mildly funny trailer with obnoxious guffaws.
Then the film started and I was fortunately swept away. Jim Carrey's southern drawl silenced the irritating audience and the film planted a smile on my face that did not leave once during its 102 minutes.
Like Carrey's character, this film is at once crude, heartfelt and altogether remarkable.
"I Love You Phillip Morris" is the amazingly true story of Steven Russell (Carrey) — a gay con artist with at least 14 known aliases and multiple prison escapes. As the film shows, his criminal activity was committed out of love for his partner, Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor), whom he met in prison.
The story is so bizarre that it only seems fitting for it to play out as absurdist comedy. Right? However, some critics took issue with the film's tone, including my colleagues here at The Film Yap. Some felt the film telegraphed too many satirical winks. But I truly believe there is warm sincerity beneath its humorous surface. That credit goes to its lead actors.
Carrey's clown makeup has faded away. Steven Russell is one of his most complex, deeply felt creations. And McGregor delivers an equally tender, poignant performance. They add depth and reality to characters that could have easily been caricatures. Did you notice that I haven't talked about the fact that their characters are gay? That's because the fim isn't about being gay, it's about being in love.
Comparing this film to a generic Carrey comedy is something of a crime. Sure, the film's trailer may be a bit Farrelly-esque, but the film is anything but. It is too outlandish, too edgy, too provocative, too intelligent and far too original to be lumped in a category of juvenile humor.
At the certainty of sounding cliche, it will leave you laughing one minute and crying the next. Like love itself, the film is an emotional rollercoaster (one that is much less corny than this review, trust me).
The film is written and directed by John Requa and Glen Ficarra, a team experienced in mixing the crude with the tender (in films such as "Bad Santa" and "Bad News Bears"). "Phillip Morris" is their breakthrough. In the making-of documentary, Carrey refers to these filmmakers as his "version of Hal Ashby." What an apt comparison considering he, too, made comedy and drama mix seamlessly (in films such as "Harold and Maude" and "Being There").
The only thing that is standard about the film is its selection of special features. The making-of featurette is rather low-key, borderline sleepy, but the cast and crew's affection for the film is charming nonetheless.
Film4.5 Yaps
Extras: 3 Yaps