Directed by John Requa and Glenn Ficarra
(R)
***
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I Love You Phillip Morris is a very “mixed bag,” said Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times. The true story of “a small-time lawman turned con artist and the lengths he goes to for the man of his dreams,” it feels as if it’s intentionally pushing every detail “over the top” in a misguided attempt to make audiences more comfortable with the gay love story at its heart. Yet that sustained “tone of compassionate hilarity” is necessary simply because the story’s real-life details are so extraordinary, said Lisa Schwarzbaum in Entertainment Weekly. Jim Carrey’s Steven Russell and Ewan McGregor’s Phillip Morris fall in love in prison, but it’s “the creative audacity” with which Russell “conned his way through life, especially after he met Morris” and both men went free, that demands high theatricality. Bold as the actors’ sex scenes are, the film’s most daring gambit may have been the decision not to make these lovers heroes, said Andrew O’Hehir in Salon.com. Out of prison, Russell and Morris are “no less stupid and brash and addicted to conspicuous consumption” than the rest of America. No wonder the film is getting only a limited release.
