I Love You Phillip Morris

[MacGuffin]

Trailer here.

Release Date: December 3rd, 2010 (limited)

Starring: Jim Carrey, Ewan McGregor, Leslie Mann, Rodrigo Santoro, Antoni Corone
 
Directed by: Glenn Ficarra, John Requa 

Premise: Steven Russell leads a seemingly average life -- an organ player in the local church, happily married to Debbie, and a member of the local police force. That is until he has a severe car accident that leads him to the ultimate epiphany: he's gay and he's going to live life to the fullest --even if he has to break the law to do it.

[Pubrick]

ewan mcgregwho?

apart from trainspotting, has this well endowed douche ever NOT phoned it in?

he's made a career of coasting on the popularity of his costars or simply tagging along blockbusters, never showing ANY charisma, and he STILL gets top billing. even when he has chosen obvious art films it was only to flop out his penis (the pillow book, young adam). and what i don't get is it's not like his charade hasn't been revealed, The Island was supposed to be a huge hit because every idiot thought it had two huge stars that would guarrantee chemistry and explosion and huge attendance.. except they forgot that ScarJo can't act and so the film was left to be carried by her co-star who is an empty shell of an actor, the human equivalent of TUMBLEWEED.

that's just one example. this guy's career is just unbelievable.

[Alexandro]

you got a point there. It's been 15 years now since trainspotting...

Saw the trailer for this movie last week at the theatre and well...It's a tremendously hard sell. It will be funny to see how the dumb ass crowd reacts to it. At first it seems like your usual Jim Carrey over the top comedy and people were laughing. They were specially laughing at the gay angle. Suddenly it became apparent the gay angle was not really for laughs and you could feel the discomfort all over the place. By the time the trailer ended you couldn't hear a pin drop.

Beyond that the film seemed weirdly problematic.

[cronopio 2]

i've been having sleeping problems.

[mogwai]

This movie is out on DVD here.

[children with angels]

This came out ages ago here too. I've heard that it's apparently had huge problems getting distribution in the U.S. thanks to the gay content - or at least, gay content in a comedy with two big stars.

weirdly problematic.

That's exactly the way to put it. When I first watched the trailer, I had similar expectation to the people in the cinema you're talking about: I was expecting (probably because of the star power involved) that the gay 'angle' was going to be the POINT in some way - that one of the characters was going to be pretending, etc. As I slowly realised that this wasn't the case I was pleasantly surprised.

To an extent the film itself bears out this desire not to make the homosexuality an ISSUE - which is great. However, in a sense it makes itself "problematic" by trying to make this point too strongly - by almost going out of its way to say "we're totally cool about this". I'm thinking particularly of the way it reveals Carey's sexuality, and a couple of sexually explicit jokes made along the way that I just think would not be in the movie if it was about a straight couple. And the way it handles a potentially melodramatic plot towards its end.

Still, it's an interesting - if not great - film precisely for these reasons, as well as for a few others. Regardless of problems, this definitely is a step forward in terms of depicting gayness  in something approaching mainstream film. I just look forward to the time when it becomes so normal that movies can avoid some of the awkwardness that this film still contains. And also to when movies like this can be made and distributed like a regular film by a major studio.

[SiliasRuby]

The performances make this real life true story memorable. But I was engrossed and interested in it throughout. In fact, let me just say that while children with angels is right (it has its problems) I loved it and it made the film all that more interesting.