I Love You Phillip Morris

I Love You Phillip Morris, in addition to missing a comma in its title, is a strange film that just doesn't quite work. It mixes comedy and pathos, and has a nice performance by Jim Carrey, but something about it bugged me.

Not about the tobacco company, as I had surmised, instead it's about the real-life con man and prison escape artist, Steven Russell, as played by Carrey. He finds out he's adopted, and while working as a cop tracks down his birth mother, who rejects him again (he was put up for adoption, even though he was the middle child--funny). He is a devout churchgoer, having married a fellow worshipper (Leslie Mann). But after a traffic accident, he resolves to be his true self--gay.

He moves to Miami and becomes flamboyant, and discovers "it's expensive to be gay." He pulls insurance fraud scams and gets arrested, where he meets the title character, a wispy Southern queer played by Ewan McGregor. It's love at first sight for these two, and the rest of the film will be Carrey determined to escape prison to be with him.

There's two levels of this film--the love story and the slipperiness of Carrey, and I don't think they ever meshed. On one hand the film is kind of a fascinating glimpse of a criminal genius--Carrey manages to escape from prison four times, litigates cases in court without being a lawyer, and manages to get a job as a CFO, where he embezzles $800,000. In a way this film is like The Great Impostor, or Catch Me If You Can, with the added bonus of a gay love story.

The homosexuality of the film caused it to be delayed several times, and it only made 20 million, a low number for a Carrey picture. Perhaps the gay theme was a drag on the box office, though it's treated matter-of-factly in the movie (there are a few sex scenes that might make grandma blush, such as McGregor discreetly spitting out Carrey's load). But I think the bigger problem is that Carrey's fans want to see him as a good guy, and despite his love for McGregor, he's kind of a snake. A guy who fakes having AIDS isn't exactly commendable.

Still, there are some laughs, as when Carrey, perched on the edge of a parking garage, looks down at a Dumpster filled with garbage bags. He jumps, but manages to miss the entire Dumpster.