I Love You Phillip Morris

It is, let’s say, a serious comedy and an offbeat love story. Jim Carrey plays a manic con man and escape artist, a former cop and family man whose life is turned inside out, first by the realization that he’s gay and secondly by meeting the love of his life (the eponymous Philip, played by Ewan McGregor) in prison. Carrey has his caricature mode held appositely in check, but it’s still a characteristically elastic performance—and very effective on behalf of a story that is both true and outlandish. McGregor is a wonder of incisive subtlety in the role of the beloved. Filmmakers Glenn Ficarra and John Requa give the whole thing a frisky freewheeling form—with playful voiceover narration by Steven Russell (Carrey) and a zigzag approach to narrative chronology. Sexual politics and the inside economics of prison life are topics of concern in the course of this high-spirited tale, but its prime comic-dramatic energy comes from the ways that uninhibited romantic impulses prevail in extremely ironic circumstances. Leslie Mann has a nice secondary part as Steven’s increasingly amiable ex-wife. Pageant Theatre. Rated R