Filmikaze!

By: Glenn Ficarra, John Requa (directors, writers), Steve McVicker (book)

Starring: Jim Carrey, Ewan McGregor, Leslie Mann, Rodrigo Santoro

Based on the real life events of con artist, impostor, and multiple prison escapee Steven Jay Russell (Carrey). While incarcerated, Russell falls in love with his cell mate, Phillip Morris (McGregor).

I’ve been meditating on this film all day today, trying to determine the reasons why it didn’t sit quite right with me. I read some bits and pieces of reviews in an effort to suss out why it left me feeling so adrift and vaguely discomfited, but all I found was praise, mostly for Jim Carrey’s return to more serious fare. Carrey does give a solid performance, I can’t deny that, but still there’s a prevailing sense of ickiness I can’t shake about I Love You Phillip Morris.

I think, perhaps, it’s the portrayal of homosexual men as stereotypes in a film that is ostensibly attempting to present them as real (albeit strange) people. I do realise that Steven Russell, Phillip Morris, et al, are actual human beings, and one would presume a measure of characterization was drawn from those actual people. That doesn’t change that the only non-criminal major gay character in the film is only presented within the context of cliches (Walking his two tiny dogs with his boyfriend down Ocean Avenue in Miami, for example) or as The Boyfriend Who Dies From AIDS, leaving the protagonist with his sage-like death bed wisdom. This is a character who is framed as being one of the most important in Russell’s life, and yet we only see him when it’s time to have the big “my boyfriend died of AIDS” reveal, which is itself devalued within the context of the entire film when you realise we’re only told this so we can understand how Russell was able to effectively fake the disease.

True story or not, the ham-handed marginalization of that particular character and the effect of his death on Russell’s life is really pretty gross. Are we really not beyond self-congratulatory portrayals of gays yet, Hollywood?

The movie itself isn’t bad. The first half absolutely plods along, but the second is genuinely entertaining, and Russell’s real life exploits are really quite surprising. By the end of the film, I wanted to like it, but as I said, the overall entertainment value didn’t quite make up for the prevailing sense of unease it instilled. I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about it; if you’ve seen it, I’d love to know what you thought.

Oh, and I must mention that someone, somewhere in the process between screenplay to distribution should have gotten the name changed. Even now, I just think of cigarettes.