I Love You Phillip Morris (15) (95min) (From The Northern Echo)

I Love You Phillip Morris (15) (95min)

11:39am Thursday 18th March 2010 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(0)

A FILM with a split personality. Is it a comedy, is it a drama, is it a love story, is it a real-life tale?

The answer is yes to all those questions with writer-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, who made Bad Santa, happy to let an admittedly restrained Jim Carrey comedy co-exist alongside romantic drama.

Try to accept that Carrey isn’t going to enter a gurning contest and is playing it straight – well, as straight as you can play someone who’s gay – as Stephen Russell, a happily married man with a wife (Leslie Mann) and young daughter.

He’s also homosexual, cheating on his missus with other men. After finally coming out, he moves to Florida with his boyfriend Jimmy (Rodrigo Santoro) where they love living the high life. But that costs money, so Russell embarks on a spot of embezzling.

He ends up behind bars, where he finds true love with fellow prisoner Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor, with Southern accent and blond hair).

Russell, out on parole, will do anything to please Phillip and keep him in the manner to which he’s become accustomed.

He poses as a lawyer – and amazingly not only gets away with it, but wins the case and gets Phillip out of jail. They become a proper (odd) couple, but Russell can’t stop his old criminal ways.

If the makers didn’t tell you it was true, you wouldn’t believe it. The real Stephen Russell is serving a 144-year sentence, spending 23 hours of every day confined to his cell without visitors.