PHOTOS |
COMING SOON|
EXAMINER.COM FILM ARTICLES
||HOME
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
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.
SUBSCRIBE TO THE POPCORN REEL MOVIE
REVIEWS RSS FEED