FILM REVIEW I Love You Phillip Morris

Catch ‘Phillip Morris’ if you can


Cinema
Daniel Carey

WHEN I first heard that Jim Carrey was starring in a film called ‘I Love You Phillip Morris’, I assumed it was a satirical ode to big tobacco. But the eponymous character (played by Ewan McGregor) is just an ordinary guy – unlike Steven Russell, whose extraordinary true story is told in this movie by the guys behind ‘Bad Santa’.
At the very beginning, we are told by an on-screen caption: ‘This really happened’. Then, for emphasis: ‘It really did’. The full import of this only came home 100 minutes and many twists later. It’s rare to come out of the cinema and be filled with an urge to find the source material, but getting my hands on a copy of Steve McVicker’s book was top of my list.
When we first meet Steven Russell (Carrey), he’s married to a perky, religious woman (Leslie Mann). Adopted as a child, he becomes a cop in order to find his birth mother. Rejected on her doorstep, he spots the welcome mat and announces: “I’m going to take this ... because it’s a lie.”
Lying, we discover is something Russell is very good at. A car accident prompts him to admit to his wife and daughter that he’s gay, and he relocates and embraces a new lifestyle. “No-one really talks about this, but being gay is really expensive,” he muses, as various stereotypical boxes are ticked. Having grown accustomed to hedonism, he becomes a con man to keep up his living standards. And that’s just the first 15 minutes or so.
Imprisoned, he meets the sweet, gentle Morris (a fairly one-dimensional McGregor), and romance blossoms in inauspicious circumstances. It’s upon his release that things start to get really interesting.
Steven blags his way into a high-paying corporate job, embracing all kinds of necessary evils to keep up his cover. “Golf?” a disbeliving Phillip muses at one point. “You’re a homosexual!”
As you may have gathered by now, ‘I Love You Phillip Morris’ is a bit all over the place. One minute it’s an adventure caper along the lines of ‘Catch Me If You Can’. The next it’s a romance. Then it’s a comedy. At times it’s a prison drama, or a take on relationships. Even allowing for the genre-hopping, it feels disorganised and begins to take on the feel of a sketch show – and as in all sketch shows, some bits are much better than others.
Still, Carrey – not, admittedly, everyone’s cup of tea – rises to the challenge of playing the lead. More importantly, the raw material is so good that it’s hard not to be swept along. The phrase ‘never a dull moment’ was rarely so applicable to a biographical tale. Phallic clouds and George W Bush both make cameo appearances.
Steven’s ability to escape from tight situations (including prison) gets its first proper outing in one bewildering, compelling five-minute montage. The last of his jailbreaks is so outrageous, it must be true. We won’t spoil it here by spilling the beans, but if you’re not going to see the flick (I’m thinking of those who, like ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ creator Larry David, stayed away from ‘Brokeback Mountain’), be sure to read the details on the web. And if you are planning to go, then for God’s sake, don’t go ruining the surprise for yourself by feasting on Russell’s amazing life-story beforehand – there’ll be plenty of time for that afterwards.
Hell, even the ‘what happened next’ lines that appear before the closing credits are mind-boggling. When was the last time you could say that?

Rating 7.5 out of 10