Fast, fun and stylish comedies are in short supply this year, so I was really looking forward to I Love You, Phillip Morris. But for all its wackiness, witty editing, colorful production design and terrific performances, by the end it was a movie I had suffered through more than enjoyed. That sounds worse than it is. I liked ILYPM a lot. I just wished I’d loved it.
Which is not to say the movie is a failure. I think it may have beeen the intention of co-directors John Requa and Glenn Ficarra to tell a dark story all along. And the increasingly troubling gap between the protagonist’s inner reality and the flashy filmmaking may be a brilliant device to unease us. If so, it worked.
The true story of a devoted husband, father and deputy cop, I Love You, Phillip Morris begins just before the moment of this upright citizen’s transformation to outrageous gay conman. The outrageousness is not the gayness, but the audacity of the frauds he perpetuates. Even more outrageous are his legendary escapes from jail—four times in five years, all on a Friday the Thirteenth (because his boyfriend, Phillip Morris, whom he meets in prison, was born on a Friday the Thirteenth).
Jim Carrey gives a balls-to-the-walls performance as Steven Jay Russell, the church organist-turned-gay-felon, attacking the character with his usual terrier-like zeal, but also with a deep infusion of darkness. Carrey has always been able to tap into a certain twisted place, and in the past it has divided critics and box offices, most notoriously in The Cable Guy, which, coming on the heels of the wildly popular Ace Ventura, left audiences reeling.
For the longest time, not much was known about Kevin Smith’s newest written film since 2008’s Zack and Miri Make A Porno, which is also the writer/director’s first horror film, titled Red State.
