I love you Philip Morris is a very bizarre comedy. The story is based on facts which are sometimes so unbelievable that I really had to check online if the claim that this story is based on the life of Steven Jay Russell was true. Fargo was also supposed to be based on real facts, but later it turned out not to be true. Russell is played Jim Carrey who manages to really act convincingly. He’s not doing he over the top comedy and funny faces he’s well-known for, but subdues those tendencies and shows he can be just as funny.
The movie has had some distribution issues in the US. I wonder if this also is because of the fact that Russel is gay. This movie shows that fact very explicitly. I would not mind if they had omitted some scenes as they could have told this fact in a different way.
Despite those scenes I do think that I Love you Philip Morris is very good comedy. Ewan McGregor is Philip Morris (the name has nothing to do with the brand by the way), with whom Russel gets into a relationship. The film shows that Russell was a very good con man, showing the work that he did and how he managed to escape from jail several times.
If you are not shocked by some explicit scenes, then this movie is very entertaining with good acting by both Carrey and McGregor. You’ll probably wonder yourself whether this all really happened, but everything i read about Russell seems to confirm that it actually did.
Score: 8
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I wanna see this one so much; gay topic in films always maked me interested (I’m straight but those people must be treated like humans, that’s what I’m for). Besides, many gay films are total dramas, and a comedy would be so good. I suppose that they didn’t manage to find a good distributor for the US, that’s why the picture faced some problems. The Americans don’t usually ban movies like this.