I Love You Phillip Morris (2009–102 mins) Jim Carey, Ewen McGregor

This is a bit of a quirky yet normal for Jim Carey movie to watch. What complicates it even more is it’s based on a true story. Albeit a really fricking weird so damn odd story that it can only be true story. It’s based on the life of Steven Russell (Carey), who had a normal life at first. He was a husband, a police officer and a normal upstanding member of society. One day he gets into a nasty car wreck and it has an amazing effect on him. It brings about an epiffany that the world around him will never be the same.  In a nutshell he realizes he is secretly gay and in order to be gay he needs a ton of money so he becomes a world class con man. Confused yet?  Don’t worry the confusion doesn’t end there. While in prison for one of his many indiscressions he meets and subsequently falls in love with Phillip Morris (McGregor). Russell then proceeds to use his tallent of conning to try and get him and his new lover out of jail and keep themselves together forever and happy. But for a chronic con man it’s never easy.

This sounds like it could be a new version of “Catch Me if You Can” with different people. But it’s a big gay uncomfortable mess of a movie. I have no problem with the gay community, nor do I have problems with gay people.culture in movies. However, I think this movie goes for some over the top depictions, jokes, and dialoug just for laughs, which makes it cheap and shallow to me. It’s like they felt they were missing some thickness to the plot and jokes so hey let’s throw in some more over the top gay jokes and since it’s in a movie that we depict gay people as the protagonists it’s ok! Well, it’s just not. It comes off as uncomfortable and thrusts too much of it in our face that we lose the main crux of the plot and story in the mess. It’s a movie about a man who is so far in love that he engages in an obsession of conning which then infringes on his obsession of love. All becoming a vicious cylce.

Carey is decent in this film, kinda an odd obsession of his own I think, in which he plays a weird, on another planet character like in “Me ,Myself and Irene”. He sells it well and jumps into it 100% but the dialoug brings him down a bit even if he sells it well and gets us believing in him the whole time. McGregor however, isn’t quite as good. It almost feels like he is overacting here and it almost takes a bit away from the part.

Verdict–> Again like other movies I have seen lately it’s not BAD it’s just not GOOD either. Lovers of Jim Carey will enjoy it throughly but the main stream audience who is just here to be entertained should shy away. It will make you more uncomfortable then it will entertain you. There are some laughs here and there tho and the story is kinda interesting being that it is based on a true story. Not kid friendly at ALL. I can’t give it my GeekJock recommendation tho for anyone other then the biggest Jim Ca

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