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Saturday, December 18, 2010

MOVIE REVIEW
I Love You Phillip Morris
I Love You, I Love Myself, And Myself, And Myself, And..

Rodrigo Santoro as Jimmy Stemple and Jim Carrey as Steven Russell in "I Love You Phillip Morris", written and directed by John Requa and Glenn Ficarra. 
Roadside Attractions

by Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com        Follow popcornreel on Twitter FOLLOW
Saturday, December 18, 2010

Truth is often stranger than fiction.  No script in Hollywood could be written like the truth of the story finally brought to the big screen after years of delay in "I Love You Phillip Morris", directed by John Requa and Glenn Ficarra.  The engaging film is playing in numerous U.S. cities.

A con-man falls in love with another man while in prison and the con-man jettisons his life with his sunny, plastic wife to run away with Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor) shedding numerous skins in the process to ensure a life with him.  Steven Russell knows that he's living a lie but in uncovering that reality continues to live other lies (and lives) in furtherance of his declaration of love in a society still unwilling to accept it.  This truism is the sad sidebar running through Messrs. Requa's and Ficarra's film.

"I Love You Phillip Morris" represents a bold stretch for Jim Carrey, who wonderfully explores the guts of his narcissistic character Steven and runs him down a relentless and destructive path.  The story, scripted by the directors, is more about the obsessive drives servicing true love than the relationship between two men who unabashedly love each other.  Mr. Carrey plays his character as a fanatical swindler whose groundhog day-like ventures keep bringing him back to square one.

The film's mistake is that as good as Mr. Carrey's work is, the movie is a bright showcase, especially in Mr. McGregor's case, for letting you know that straight actors are playing gays and nodding at stereotypes for comedy's sake, rather than advocate those characters' own cause and raison d'être.  "I Love You Phillip Morris" suffers from a gimmicky, self-mocking fissure around its edges that prevents it from being a pure, unromanticized drama.  Had the directors told a cold, harsh tale, or just flat out made a documentary it would have been more appealing than it is.  We are never in touch with Mr. McGregor's title character, who looks and feels hollow. 

What if two gay actors had played these roles?  (Compare and contrast the 2000 fiction drama "The Monkey Mask", which starred Susie Porter, a straight actress playing a lesbian police detective, and actress Kelly McGillis, a real-life recently-out lesbian, who played a married professor who has an affair with the detective.)

Despite its flaws, Mr. Carrey's performance is the film's saving grace.  Steven's layers of deception are unselfconsciously presented.  Steven knows who he is, but does he really know who he's become?  I liken some of the evolution of the real-life Steven Russell and the slick way he's depicted to the way that "Chameleon Street" (1989), a better, brilliant, more cutting and acerbic film, portrayed real-life scammer William Douglas Street, expertly written and directed by Wendell B. Harris.  In that film Mr. Harris played Mr. Street in such a convincing and charismatic manner as he pretends to be a lawyer, a doctor, a financial trader, as to be chilling to the bone.  The film's tone was cold and unforgiving, as was "Six Degrees Of Separation" (1993), about yet another real-life con man, who pretended to be Sidney Poitier's "son".  (The latter two films were more satirical than this movie.)

"I Love You Phillip Morris" is not without its jarring moments, but those arise from Steven's own deluded sense of self, not from the overall tone of the film, which is more comedic than dramatic.  While it has its moments of entertainment, it could have been better.  That "I Love You Phillip Morris" finally saw the light of day is a remarkable story in and of itself, arguably reflecting some of the very politics that this film seems to dance in but mostly around.

With: Leslie Mann and Rodrigo Santoro.

"I Love You Phillip Morris" is rated R by the Motion Picture Association Of America for sexual content including strong dialogue, and language.  The film's running time is one hour and 50 minutes.

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