I Love You Phillip Morris

‘This real­ly hap­pened. It real­ly did.’ So boasts a pair of titles at the start of I Love You Phillip Mor­ris, the true sto­ry of straight cop-turned-gay grifter Steven Rus­sell (Jim Car­rey), who funds his new­ly flam­boy­ant lifestyle with a series of small cons and fraud­u­lent law suits.

When, inevitably, Rus­sell is caught and sent to the state pen­i­ten­tiary, he meets the love of his life, the tit­u­lar Phillip Mor­ris (Ewan McGre­gor). He then escapes on four sep­a­rate occa­sions, each time embark­ing on a dif­fer­ent scam in an attempt to free his lover and pro­vide them both with a hap­py end­ing. His escapes and schemes may veer wild­ly between stu­pid­i­ty and genius, but always there is an under­cur­rent of desperation.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the fact that it’s based on a true sto­ry is the only con­vinc­ing thing about the movie. Giv­en that it’s the direc­to­r­i­al debut of Glenn Ficar­ra and John Requa, the writ­ing team behind the sub­ver­sive Bad San­ta and Bad News Bears, per­haps what’s most dis­ap­point­ing is the film’s inabil­i­ty to estab­lish a con­sis­tent tone.

Cer­tain­ly, the mate­r­i­al is miss­ing the sure hand of a Ter­ry Zwigoff or Richard Lin­klater, or per­haps its uneven­ness is mere­ly a result of the re-edit it under­went after caus­ing a pan­ic amongst US dis­trib­u­tors due to main­stream-unfriend­ly gay sex scenes. Car­rey in par­tic­u­lar, who can excel at either zany or seri­ous if giv­en half a chance, is left sit­ting uncom­fort­ably on the fence between the two.

Ol’ Rub­ber Face has enjoyed some­thing of a resur­gence in pop­u­lar­i­ty recent­ly thanks to sol­id small­er movies (Yes Man), mo-cap adven­tures (A Christ­mas Car­ol) and a strong pres­ence on Twit­ter. Quite how his fan base will react to I Love You Phillip Mor­ris remains to be seen.

On the one hand, Car­rey and McGregor’s per­for­mances are root­ed in cliché; but then there’s truth in every stereo­type. Audi­ences are will­ing to respond pos­i­tive­ly to two A‑listers going all Broke­back Moun­tain, and yet this film shows none of the bold­ness of Ang Lee’s trail­blaz­er: the sex scenes going no fur­ther than some out-of-frame fel­la­tio and sil­hou­et­ted kissing.