A Conman Can't Catch A Break: I Love You Phillip Morris Is Good, Not Great!

The Good: Funny, Interesting characters, Good acting.
The Bad: Repetitive plot, Not as funny or endearing as I had hoped.
The Basics: At various points funny, I Love You Phillip Morris is edgy and interesting, but hardly timeless.


Back when I reviewed Brokeback Mountain (reviewed here!), I took a lot of flack for not liking the film because I am tired of super depressing movies about gay characters. Yes, I have been looking for a movie with gay characters where they are happy and do not get beaten to death. Call me crazy, I get tired of "gay film" being "violence against gay" film. In the process of that, I was advised to see I Love You Phillip Morris. So, tonight, I decided to do that.

I Love You Phillip Morris is edgy and it took some trust in the movie to not assume it was going the depressing route of so many other movies with gay, lesbian or transgendered characters. And while the movie lives up to that, it is not as incredible as I had been led to believe. It is essentially Fun With Dick And Jane with gay characters and I applaud the moment, early on, where Steven's sexuality is established as a simple matter of fact. While he loves Phillip, Steven's story is arguably much more about being a conman than it is about being a gay man and I like that about I Love You Phillip Morris.

Steven Russell is a cop who lives with his life happily, albeit hiding that he is gay from her, while looking for his birth mother. When he gets into a car accident, he comes out to Debbie and leaves her. He moves out with Jimmy to Florida and racks up some serious debts before he is caught for fraud and sent to prison. There, he meets Phillip Morris, who is trying to get another inmate medical attention. Phillip is in for theft of service for failing to return a rental car, but he is transferred the day they meet and the two fall in love. They write to one another and grow more and more attached, despite being separated by a yard.

But when Steven is transferred to a different facility, Phillip is heartbroken. So, when Steven is released, he springs Phillip and gets a job at a company where he is able to embezzle millions of dollars. His life with Phillip is turned upside down when he is again imprisoned and he makes every effort to break out and return to his love.

I Love You Phillip Morris is a remarkably repetitive movie and it does not take long before one feels like Steven is just not going to catch a break. He is repeatedly found out or betrayed and it soon becomes tiring to invest in him because he is the embodiment of the old adage that a leopard cannot change its spots. He is a conman and he cons and gets caught, escapes using his wits, and gets caught over and over and over again. The repetitive quality makes it worth watching the film once, but difficult to imagine that it would be worth watching more than that.

What is worth noting is the acting. Jim Carrey gives a distinctive performance by not simply acting like Jim Carrey. He is funny, but not manic and that gives his portrayal of Steven a chance for emotional depth that his characters do not usually have. On the flip side, Ewan McGregor as Phillip is almost entirely humorless, relegated to a supporting role. The position is a quiet one and McGregor wears it well, focusing on making the chemistry with Carrey believable. He works at it with a range of faint smiles and emoting with his eyes more than anything else.

Also delivering a good supporting performance is Leslie Mann, who plays Steven's ex-wife Debbie. Her scenes are verbally funny and she plays them deadpanned well enough to make the viewer believe that through all of the phases of Steven's life, she would still take his calls.

In short, because I am finding surprisingly little to write about the film, I Love You Phillip Morris is an entertaining film to watch, but hard to recommend for the buy. It is not quite clever or funny enough to add to one's permanent collection. But yes, it fits the bill for a movie with gay characters who are not particularly harassed, hated or harmed for their homosexuality.

For other films with strong gay or lesbian characters, be sure to visit my reviews of:
The Kids Are All Right
Bound
Strawberry And Chocolate

6/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Not The Comedy Some Might Suspect, Crazy Stupid Love. Is A Subtle Cinematic Winner.

The Good: Amazing cast, Good dialogue, Moments of fun
The Bad: Absolutely misrepresented by the previews, Tone is more depressing than hilarious through much of the film.
The Basics: Crazy Stupid Love. blends the realistic sense of loss with a fantasy of the dating world today to make a movie that is ultimately satisfying, but more grounded than the previews made it seem.


Unlike my wife, I am actually a fan of romantic comedies. I tend to also be a lot more critical of them because I think it's a tough sell for the genre. I'm not much of a believer in "love at first sight" (there's some irony there from my personal life, but . . .) so I tend to see love in the movies more as infatuation and the time compression for relationships there is a bit more formulaic than a realist like me is comfortable with. So, I was partially excited to see Crazy Stupid Love. because I liked members of the cast and I've been waiting for a good romantic comedy. Those who have only seen the trailers are likely to go to Crazy Stupid Love. and feel like they were victims of bait and switch, though, as the film opens with a tone that is more dour, slow and moody than one would expect from a romantic comedy.

Fortunately, Crazy Stupid Love. does not become mired in its numbness like The House Of Sand And Fog and the movie is entertaining even when it veers away from the realist moodiness of the first portions in favor of a fantasy - or parody - of adult relationships today. In some ways, Crazy Stupid Love. plays better as an anti-romantic drama before it becomes a remarkably formulaic romantic comedy. What makes it work is a level of dialogue and performance that help to overcome the plot issues and character types that feel overdone.

Cal has been married for twenty-five years when his wife tells him that she has had an affair and wants a divorce, so Cal does what men who are otherwise responsible fathers fixated entirely upon their wives do, which is to go down to the nearby bar and drink himself stupid. At the bar, he meets the younger, hipper Jacob who helps straighten him out some and gets him dating again. Cal, however, truly does love Emily, who is being pursued by David. Cal tries to date, while staying in his son's life ostensibly to see if he can find the spark with Emily again.

But the longer they are around one another, the more Jacob realizes that Cal might be the answer to his dating problem. Jacob has inadvertently stopped having meaningless sex and playing the field and fallen for Hannah. So, as Cal tries to adapt to being single, Jacob turns to him for advice on how to settle down.

Crazy Stupid Love. is good. It's very good, in fact. But it's not uproariously funny and it does not feel as fresh and new as so many others seem to want to believe it is. For example, Steve Carell has been praised a lot for his acting in Crazy Stupid Love. I like the works of Steve Carell and I think he's good in Crazy Stupid Love. But what he is not is unsurprising as Cal. In fact, anyone who has seen Dan In Real Life knows just how well Carell can pull off numb and depressed and anyone who has seen Date Night (reviewed here!) can absolutely believe that Carell can play a character who goes from mired in routine to active and energized. In other words, directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa used decent casting more than mining something truly unexpected from the actor. But, to reiterate, Carell is good in the role and he plays moody, depressed and fixated exceptionally well. And when he gets the spark in his eyes from Cal having fun, he sells those moments as well.

Conversely, Emma Stone - who I've enjoyed in three out of three projects before this - does a great job playing a character I couldn't stand. Hannah, more than being a fully realized character, is a ridiculous modern archetype whereby a highly intelligent young woman falls for exactly the type guy she seems too smart to get involved with. Just like Smart People was a parody of how people see people of a certain intelligence as socially awkward and alienated, Hannah represents a downright inexplicable trend in modern cinema whereby a ridiculously smart young woman sees through the facade of ridiculous, chauvinistic gameplaying of a male character (in this case Jacob), but then wants to be with him anyway. Stone lands the role, making it through all of her articulate arguments skillfully and playfully delivering some of the movie's funniest lines, but her character is that annoying Hollywood cliche of book and street smart and emotionally stupid.

That said, Crazy Stupid Love. oscillates between being a very adult film and a surprisingly juvenile one. Ryan Gosling's Jacob is a pretty stereotypical player and reminded me almost instantly of Jake Gyllenhaal's character from Love And Other Drugs (reviewed here!). In fact, Jacob's character arc is essentially Jamie's arc only he realizes quicker he doesn't want to be a douchebag anymore. Gosling carries the role well and he is charismatic with his smile and eyes far more than by simply taking his shirt off.

The great cast seems to be going farther than I thought it would, though, because the more I analyze Crazy Stupid Love. the more I think of it as mundane and derivative. While watching the movie, it started out as depressing, but became more engaging - despite the cliche straightman/wingman teaches the player story - the more it went on. I attribute that, in large part, to the dialogue. Crazy Stupid Love. sounds good and the characters are almost all articulate and interesting (Marisa Tomei's crazy Kate being an obvious exception who seems to help prove the rule), even when they make less real-world sense than some would like.

Crazy Stupid Love is not fun for most of the movie. This is not a comedic masterpiece, instead it is a depressing character study whipped together with one of the most absurd Hollywood cliches of our time. But writer Dan Fogelman makes us believe that the otherwise sensible and stable Cal could find attraction in starting over and playing the field for a time and that fantasy is why we go to the movies. The stellar performances land an otherwise painful or absurd movie and make it worth seeing.

For other films with Emma Stone, please check out my reviews of:
The Help
Friends With Benefits
Easy A
Marmaduke
Zombieland

6.5/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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