Plot: Steven Russell is happily married to Debbie, and a member of the local police force when a car accident provokes a dramatic reassessment of his life.
Directors: Glenn Ficarra, John Requa
Writers: John Requa, Glenn Ficarra
Stars: Jim Carrey, Ewan McGregor and Leslie Mann
Gigantic waste of time
This movie is not only boring and uninteresting, but in the addition of being bad it's actually offensive. I support gay cause and I often say there should be more movies with homosexual couples, movies like “Brokeback Mountain”, “A Single Man”, “Milk”. So the more the better, here I was thinking, before I saw this movie. After all, love is always the same, no matter if it is between woman and man, woman and woman, man and man. The strength of it may be exactly the same, the emotions ARE the same. But “I love you Phillip Morris” proved to me that there is only one thing worse than few movies about gay people comparing to overwhelming amount of movies about straight people. The movie about gay love that is not only offensive to people in homosexual relationships and everyone supporting them, but worst of all – written by people who don't have any courage in them.
So here is the story - Phillip is married and has kids. He has a job, he has friends, he has a family. He lives modest life. He's not happy.
And then BANG! He decides to be gay but not just gay – the biggest stereotype of gay I've seen. And what's worse is that everyone in the movie who are also gay are just like him – shiny watches, glamor everywhere, pretentious restaurants, houses, yachts. The jokes are not funny and worse yet – even though it's 21th century it's still middle ages at certain places of the globe. Showing stereotypes like that, without even providing good laughs results in two things – one - we see writer's pathetic attempts in making movie funny and it's physically painful, two – people who are hostile towards gays aren't proven wrong. Because they think “hey it's not funny, why would that be in comedy then? It must be true!”. Dangerous, poorly written, just plain horrible. And to anyone who writes “oh, you took it too seriously”. Well, given that 99% of this film wasn't funny I assumed, after all, it's not comedy and only director and producers who are blind and deaf would still think it is.
And the ending is disgusting. Steven is sentenced for life in prison and he looks up to let God know he sensed he was punished. So the message of the movie is – live in the lie with your boring catholic family or you'll rot in jail. Again – horrible.
Why did he steal in the first place? He said because that's what he does. But somehow when he was with his wife he didn't? When he was unhappy? And after he found love and decided to be openly gay he suddenly became criminal? Please.
The only assets of the movie are Carrey's and McGregor's performances. The latter actually manages to be funny, which in the movie that awful is a miracle. I laughed few times during the whole movie, once when Carrey missed the dumpster (wow what an intelligent joke by the way, it's a good thing I laugh at anything) and when McGregor was delivering his lines, which weren't funny, but at least he has a talent. Oh, and the remarks Carrey made during golf game. That's it.
Not only are the writers lousy and not brave – it's years after tent love scene in “Brokeback Mountain” and they only include few light kisses and the camera operator is so awkward and shy, along with the director, they change the shot or the scene in insane hurry. People, where are your balls? I suspect some of you may know what I'll write – Shame on you! It's 21st century, gay people are rising kids, getting married and you move the camera away? You make the movie about two men who are in love and you don't even have the guts to carry on with the signs of affection on the screen? And if any of you, and I read a review where what's going on in this film is being called “explicit” (!) consider dance scene to be brave, then it only shows that some heterosexual people consider gay scenes to be as shocking as mini skirts worn by girls were decades ago. And any hints of sexual contact are either vulgar or make it seem like sex was something so insanely casual to homosexual people. Again – shame on you, writers of this “film”.
I suspect that in addition of being untalented, the director of this may also be schizophrenic. He seemed not to know whether he wanted to shoot comedy or drama. In the effect he didn't shoot either. He shot despicable piece of crap and wasted Carrey's and McGregor's talent and time. And mine for that matter, which is the worst. Some of the scenes felt as out of place as that godawful scene with Malkovich and his father in “Burn After Reading” which was completely pointless, not funny and awkward to watch. In case of “I love you Phillip Morris” it's not only one scene. It's almost an entire movie.
30/100 for Carrey, McGregor, golf and dumpster scene.
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