I Love You Phillip Morris
Shelved for just about a year if memory serves (no distributor would touch it), now it can officially be said that “I Love You, Phillip Morris” is honestly the best work of Jim Carrey’s career. Better than “The Mask,” “The Truman Show,” “Man on the Moon,” even “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” It should be to no one’s surprise then that he went yet another year without an Oscar nomination. Well, hopefully he’ll have at least an Honorary Oscar in his future.
Here, Carrey plays Steven Russell, who was given away for an “under-the-table” adoption by his mother and only to be told by his adoptive parents in his teens. He grew up, got married to local sweetheart Debbie (the always tart Leslie Mann), and had a couple of kids while working on the Virginia Beach police force. One day, he uses his police resources to find his mother, but she isn’t interested in knowing him. So he picks up his family and moves to Texas, where he starts anew and is finally honest with himself, even though he begins lying to everyone else. You see, Steven is actually gay. His marriage fails after a car accident exposes his secret, but he’s a “free man” until his gifts as a budding con man land him in prison. This is where he meets Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor), and they fall in love with each other instantly. The rest of the film follows Phillip and Steven’s relationship in and out of prison, which typically leads to a con by Steven that lands him in jail and to Phillip feeling betrayed.
The film is written and directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, who earlier co-wrote the cult hit “Bad Santa,” and now based this film on the book by Texas reporter Steve McVicker. This is such an outrageous story it’s hard to believe that it’s actually true; Russell is currently serving 144 years in Texas for impersonating doctors, lawyers, and FBI agents and for fraud when he was the CFO of a healthcare company. No one else could play this role better than Carrey, who, along with McGregor (also doing some of the best work of his career), is unafraid of showing the affection in Steven and Phillip’s relationship. Beyond going fearlessly into the intimacy of this relationship, Carrey also blends genuine sympathy with his natural comic ability into a performance that defines Steven even when he isn’t sure who he is himself. The result is a comic masterpiece that is unlike anything we’ve seen out of Carrey in years. Welcome back, Jim.
