I LOVE YOU, PHILLIP MORRIS (2010)There’s something that goes haywire in the brains of big screen comedians at about year six of superstardom. Having already proven themselves within the ghettoized realm of film comedy, they suddenly want to prove to audiences and critics (and themselves) that they can “act.” Too frequently this means insisting on being miscast as the lead in middlebrow dramatic fare, grubbing for Oscar gold like Dickensian street urchins whimpering hard for that elusive second helping of gruel. And no one has fallen into this trap harder or more often than Jim Carrey, who first dipped his toes into dramatic waters in the mid-1990s with films like The Cable Guy and The Truman Show, then dove in head-first with mid-career snoozemongers like The Majestic and Man on the Moon. He finally hit the bullseye with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in 2004, which no one actually saw, except for you and everyone you follow on Twitter who isn’t a professional athlete. Maybe he’s cursed, because nine years after Sunshine, Carrey has once again delivered a touching, fully-realized performance in yet another film pretty much no one has seen: as a gay con artist and accomplished jailbreak aficionado in Glenn Ficarra and John Requa’s I Love You, Phillip Morris. In giving up the gold-plated ghost to return to more familiar screwball territory, a funny thing has happened: Carrey manages to deliver maybe his best performances ever, supported by Ficarra and Requa’s clever script (based on a true story) and sure-footed directing. Also key to the film’s success is Ewan McGregor, who in his role as the titular object of Carrey’s afftection proves far more crushworthy than most heterosexual rom-com love interests. Morris is a brisk, fun movie about what it means to be an honest person, and about what happens when being true to oneself means lying to everyone else. And in being honest about his own strengths and weaknesses as a performer, Carrey triumphs.
I LOVE YOU, PHILLIP MORRIS (2010)There’s something that goes haywire in the brains of big screen comedians at about year six of superstardom. Having already proven themselves within the ghettoized realm of film comedy, they suddenly want to prove to audiences and critics (and themselves) that they can “act.” Too frequently this means insisting on being miscast as the lead in middlebrow dramatic fare, grubbing for Oscar gold like Dickensian street urchins whimpering hard for that elusive second helping of gruel. And no one has fallen into this trap harder or more often than Jim Carrey, who first dipped his toes into dramatic waters in the mid-1990s with films like The Cable Guy and The Truman Show, then dove in head-first with mid-career snoozemongers like The Majestic and Man on the Moon. He finally hit the bullseye with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in 2004, which no one actually saw, except for you and everyone you follow on Twitter who isn’t a professional athlete. Maybe he’s cursed, because nine years after Sunshine, Carrey has once again delivered a touching, fully-realized performance in yet another film pretty much no one has seen: as a gay con artist and accomplished jailbreak aficionado in Glenn Ficarra and John Requa’s I Love You, Phillip Morris. In giving up the gold-plated ghost to return to more familiar screwball territory, a funny thing has happened: Carrey manages to deliver maybe his best performances ever, supported by Ficarra and Requa’s clever script (based on a true story) and sure-footed directing. Also key to the film’s success is Ewan McGregor, who in his role as the titular object of Carrey’s afftection proves far more crushworthy than most heterosexual rom-com love interests. Morris is a brisk, fun movie about what it means to be an honest person, and about what happens when being true to oneself means lying to everyone else. And in being honest about his own strengths and weaknesses as a performer, Carrey triumphs.
