Chris Knipp
12-21-2010, 03:15 PM
Glenn Ficarra, John Requa: I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS (2010)
Review by Chris Knipp
http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/2530/iloveyouphillipmorris12.jpg
Ewan MacGregor and Jim Carrey almost-kiss in I Love You, Phillip Morris
Doesn't make you proud
If it was daring for stars like Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor to play gay lovers who meet in a Texas prison, giving this movie an "ick" factor for mainstream audiences that kept it on the shelf for two years, it hardly matters. The "true" story about a con man who repeatedly escaped from jail and even posed as a lawyer to gain his lover's release is played out on screen with a disappointing lack of momentum ornuance. This is an amazing narrative, and the movie entertains to some extent simply by outlining it, but the writing, editing, and direction unfortunately aren't up to the level of the juicy source material. While the scams of the fake airline pilot played by Leo DiCaprio so successfully in Steven Spielberg's jazzy 2002 Catch Me If You Can, a similar grifter biopic, are breathtakingly involving, in Phillip Morris the numerous swindles of Steven Russell (Carrey) are too roughly sketched in to be really suspenseful. In adapting the eponymous book about the "jailhouse Houdini" by Steve McVicker, Requa and Ficarra ought to have pared down and focused more on a few key episodes. Instead they kept too many sequences in too many locations, including so many prison uniforms for the odd couple they have to be color coded as white, yellow, green, and so on. Maybe the movie was shelved so long primarily because it had just turned out to be kind of a mess.
Russell is introduced in hospital, apparently dying, and then voiceover-narrates his story. This is a scam too -- the film's as well as Russell's -- he's not dying, and he's now in prison for life under 23-hour-a-day lockdown. As he tells it, he begins as a kid in Virginia Beach who learned he was adopted. Then he's married with kids and a born-again wife, working as a cop just so he can find out who his real mother was. When he does, she won't talk to him. That rejection and a serious car accident decide Russell to become a full-on "faggot" (his word) and -- the two identities being somehow connected in his mind if not in ours -- a thief. This double transformation, potentially more interesting than the crimes, is just skimmed over, though the Publisher's Weekly review of the book says it's one thing the author conveys really well. Otherwise the review says McVicker wrote an "unexceptional book" about an "exceptional man." The movie adds another foggy layer of unexceptionalness in the retelling. Anyway, after finding that "being gay is really expensive" and stealing or scamming a lot of dough to live high and gay (amusingly depicted in a few fast vignettes), Russell eventually gets caught and, in jail, meets the love of his life with the cigarette brand name (never commented upon).
The directing pair's best known effort was Bad Santa, a kind of extended X-rated Saturday Night Live episode. This movie has a SNL feel at times too. Bad Santa was a small triumph of bad taste and bad vibes, a pleasingly dark Scrouge-ing of Christmas for our times. The crudity of the current effort is indicated by its simplistic establishing sequences and voiceover, and a "by-the-way-I-was-always-gay" scene that introduces the protagonist's homosexuality, with tremendous subtlety, by showing him performing sweaty nude anal intercourse on an anonymous mustachioed man. On the other hand, the movie lacks the courage to show MacGregor and Carrey in a greater act of intimacy than a quick kiss. I Love You Phillip Norris is excited by the idea of itself. It seems to think the mere fact of a gay con man is somehow surprising enough -- that constantly reminding the viewer that its two famous stars are playing southern jailbird male lovers will be enough to render the movie interesting. Sadly, this perfunctory effort wears out its welcome early, and is rarely the fun it might have been.
Carrey plays Steven Russell the way he's played most everything else he's ever done: attention-grabbing high energy, all grinning and mugging and a bit of sobbing; if he can flash the teeth, he wants us to know, he can also turn on the waterworks, and since hilarity is exaggerated, the tragedy has to be cranked up too, to keep pace. Carrey's a manic kind of comic, and his main presence is physical -- a broad-shouldered, loose-limbed way of slinking back and forth across the screen; a strange manner of leaning forward when he walks; skill at flopping or falling; that grin, and the occasional whoop or cackle. MacGregor plays Philip Morris as soft and sweet, with a southern accent and straw-colored hair. He's not effective enough in that mode to compete with the relentless scene-stealing of Jim Carrey and make us see these two guys as a viable couple. Hence what ought to have been the core of the movie, the love story, does not come to life.
The actual Steven Russell obviously also had a similar level of manic energy; he was a formidable scam and escape artist. But such work required extensive preparation, which is not shown. It called for skill as an actor or impersonator. But this is curiously absent from Carrey's performance. Carrey always seems the same. When you come down to it, a buffoonish comic hasn't much in common with a conman. In Spielberg's film, DiCaprio was all slick, unctious charm. A good scam artist makes people actually want to be deceived by him. Carrey is scary. He's a little too intense. His kind of straining wouldn't fool anybody. It draws too much attention. The most you can say for him in this movie's many scam episodes is that he looks pretty good in a suit. For Russell to impersonate a lawyer and become a corporate CFO that helps, but it's not quite enough for us to grasp what he's accomplishing.
As for the gay aspect, that's alternately too crude or perfunctory to be much of a factor. This is the ultimate insult to the real story and revelation of this disappointing movie's shallowness. It never captures what's essentially gay about its protagonist. As Anthony Lane concluded in his analysis (http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2010/12/13/101213crci_cinema_lane#ixzz18hTnzhw2) (if I may steal the punch line from a double review entitled "Punch Lines"), "At best, I Love You Phillip Morris may be hailed as a necessary step in Hollywood’s fearful crawl toward sexual evenhandedness; the film upholds the constitutional right of every gay man to be as much of a liar, a crook, and a creep as the rest of us. Makes you proud." But of course it doesn't give anybody reason to be proud. Carrey and MacGregor may have taken risks here, but they can't be all that gratified by the result.
Review by Chris Knipp
http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/2530/iloveyouphillipmorris12.jpg
Ewan MacGregor and Jim Carrey almost-kiss in I Love You, Phillip Morris
Doesn't make you proud
If it was daring for stars like Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor to play gay lovers who meet in a Texas prison, giving this movie an "ick" factor for mainstream audiences that kept it on the shelf for two years, it hardly matters. The "true" story about a con man who repeatedly escaped from jail and even posed as a lawyer to gain his lover's release is played out on screen with a disappointing lack of momentum ornuance. This is an amazing narrative, and the movie entertains to some extent simply by outlining it, but the writing, editing, and direction unfortunately aren't up to the level of the juicy source material. While the scams of the fake airline pilot played by Leo DiCaprio so successfully in Steven Spielberg's jazzy 2002 Catch Me If You Can, a similar grifter biopic, are breathtakingly involving, in Phillip Morris the numerous swindles of Steven Russell (Carrey) are too roughly sketched in to be really suspenseful. In adapting the eponymous book about the "jailhouse Houdini" by Steve McVicker, Requa and Ficarra ought to have pared down and focused more on a few key episodes. Instead they kept too many sequences in too many locations, including so many prison uniforms for the odd couple they have to be color coded as white, yellow, green, and so on. Maybe the movie was shelved so long primarily because it had just turned out to be kind of a mess.
Russell is introduced in hospital, apparently dying, and then voiceover-narrates his story. This is a scam too -- the film's as well as Russell's -- he's not dying, and he's now in prison for life under 23-hour-a-day lockdown. As he tells it, he begins as a kid in Virginia Beach who learned he was adopted. Then he's married with kids and a born-again wife, working as a cop just so he can find out who his real mother was. When he does, she won't talk to him. That rejection and a serious car accident decide Russell to become a full-on "faggot" (his word) and -- the two identities being somehow connected in his mind if not in ours -- a thief. This double transformation, potentially more interesting than the crimes, is just skimmed over, though the Publisher's Weekly review of the book says it's one thing the author conveys really well. Otherwise the review says McVicker wrote an "unexceptional book" about an "exceptional man." The movie adds another foggy layer of unexceptionalness in the retelling. Anyway, after finding that "being gay is really expensive" and stealing or scamming a lot of dough to live high and gay (amusingly depicted in a few fast vignettes), Russell eventually gets caught and, in jail, meets the love of his life with the cigarette brand name (never commented upon).
The directing pair's best known effort was Bad Santa, a kind of extended X-rated Saturday Night Live episode. This movie has a SNL feel at times too. Bad Santa was a small triumph of bad taste and bad vibes, a pleasingly dark Scrouge-ing of Christmas for our times. The crudity of the current effort is indicated by its simplistic establishing sequences and voiceover, and a "by-the-way-I-was-always-gay" scene that introduces the protagonist's homosexuality, with tremendous subtlety, by showing him performing sweaty nude anal intercourse on an anonymous mustachioed man. On the other hand, the movie lacks the courage to show MacGregor and Carrey in a greater act of intimacy than a quick kiss. I Love You Phillip Norris is excited by the idea of itself. It seems to think the mere fact of a gay con man is somehow surprising enough -- that constantly reminding the viewer that its two famous stars are playing southern jailbird male lovers will be enough to render the movie interesting. Sadly, this perfunctory effort wears out its welcome early, and is rarely the fun it might have been.
Carrey plays Steven Russell the way he's played most everything else he's ever done: attention-grabbing high energy, all grinning and mugging and a bit of sobbing; if he can flash the teeth, he wants us to know, he can also turn on the waterworks, and since hilarity is exaggerated, the tragedy has to be cranked up too, to keep pace. Carrey's a manic kind of comic, and his main presence is physical -- a broad-shouldered, loose-limbed way of slinking back and forth across the screen; a strange manner of leaning forward when he walks; skill at flopping or falling; that grin, and the occasional whoop or cackle. MacGregor plays Philip Morris as soft and sweet, with a southern accent and straw-colored hair. He's not effective enough in that mode to compete with the relentless scene-stealing of Jim Carrey and make us see these two guys as a viable couple. Hence what ought to have been the core of the movie, the love story, does not come to life.
The actual Steven Russell obviously also had a similar level of manic energy; he was a formidable scam and escape artist. But such work required extensive preparation, which is not shown. It called for skill as an actor or impersonator. But this is curiously absent from Carrey's performance. Carrey always seems the same. When you come down to it, a buffoonish comic hasn't much in common with a conman. In Spielberg's film, DiCaprio was all slick, unctious charm. A good scam artist makes people actually want to be deceived by him. Carrey is scary. He's a little too intense. His kind of straining wouldn't fool anybody. It draws too much attention. The most you can say for him in this movie's many scam episodes is that he looks pretty good in a suit. For Russell to impersonate a lawyer and become a corporate CFO that helps, but it's not quite enough for us to grasp what he's accomplishing.
As for the gay aspect, that's alternately too crude or perfunctory to be much of a factor. This is the ultimate insult to the real story and revelation of this disappointing movie's shallowness. It never captures what's essentially gay about its protagonist. As Anthony Lane concluded in his analysis (http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2010/12/13/101213crci_cinema_lane#ixzz18hTnzhw2) (if I may steal the punch line from a double review entitled "Punch Lines"), "At best, I Love You Phillip Morris may be hailed as a necessary step in Hollywood’s fearful crawl toward sexual evenhandedness; the film upholds the constitutional right of every gay man to be as much of a liar, a crook, and a creep as the rest of us. Makes you proud." But of course it doesn't give anybody reason to be proud. Carrey and MacGregor may have taken risks here, but they can't be all that gratified by the result.