I Love You Phillip Morris

The first memory I have of I Love You Phillip Morris was from about four years ago, when I noticed it as an announced project on Ewan McGregor's IMDb page.  Not knowing anything about it, I assumed it would be something along the lines of Thank You For Smoking.  I was wrong, if only because there is an extra "L" in this title's "Phillip;" for the record, though, I still think you could make a pretty scathing comedy about someone in love with Philip Morris products.  Being a fan of McGregor and a supporter of Jim Carrey's more artistic efforts, I looked forward to seeing I Love You Phillip Morris.  Despite getting good reviews at Sundance in 2009 (January '09, specifically), it was not released in American theaters until December of 2010, almost two years later.  What could possibly explain such a long delay for a picture that, if critics were to be believed, did not require an overhaul?

Ah.  Gay.  Gotcha.  It probably didn't help that Carrey had A Christmas Carol about to come out and Mr. Popper's Penguins in the works around the same time, either.

Isn't it funny when actors take chances instead of conforming to their brand?

I Love You Phillip Morris is the true story of Steven Jay Russell (Jim Carrey).  When the movie begins, Steven is a married police officer with a young daughter.  It's pretty obvious that he's not as happy with his life as his wife is; Steven's facial expressions during sex reminded me of Halloween in elementary school, when someone handed you a bowl of cold noodles in the dark and told you they were intestines --- ewww!  Pretty soon, Steven has come to terms with his unhappiness and decides to stop living a lie.  He swaps hetero- for homo- with his acknowledged sexuality and starts a new life.  Good for him, right?  Everybody deserves to have some joy in their life.

An example of "gay" and "happy" being synonyms

Steven's change isn't just acknowledging his sexuality, though.  This was a life change for him; he's not just the same guy who is now openly attracted to men, he's now really, really flamboyantly gay.

Note: personal style does not denote sexuality

That's not particularly noteworthy.  What is, though, is Steven's perception of what he needs to be a happy gay man.  He moves to Miami and finds himself a sexy boyfriend (Rodrigo Santoro), and everything seems to be working out just fine --- but the life Steven wants is beyond what his finances can support.  So, he puts his years of experience of living with lies to good use and becomes a con man.  While he's a pretty good criminal, he has to commit a lot of fraud to support his lifestyle and eventually gets caught.  However, in this story, that's where things hit their stride.  In jail, Steven meets the love of his life, Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor), and they fall in love.  And that's great.  But when Steven can't stop lying and conning, he starts to risk losing Phillip.  Being a fairly unconventional thinker, though, Steven always has a plan to win Phillip back.

Phillip's reaction to most of those plans

The acting is what makes I Love You Phillip Morris engaging.  When you think about it, the story balances on how likable Jim Carrey can make a man who lies to everyone, whenever he can; it's kind of like Liar, Liar, only with repercussions.  It doesn't help that this is a movie about gay men that are not cross-dressers, played by famous Hollywood actors; that's not a concept that Hollywood seems to have accepted as a remote possibility.  The script isn't exactly razor sharp, either.  To put it another way, if you don't like gay jokes, awkwardness, and innuendo, there might not be much here for you.

And if you're homophobic, you'll want to take notes.  You know, on what you don't like.

If, however, the idea of Jim Carrey taking his over the top skills in another direction intrigues you, you'll be pleasantly surprised.  Carrey is actually quite good.  Naturally, his gift for physical comedy provides some of the easiest and most frequent chuckles, but his timing on deadpan jokes is much improved, too.  What impressed me the most about the acting is how good Carrey and Ewan McGregor were as a couple.

It's adorable when couples match

McGregor plays a much smaller role than his titular status indicates, but he was also good.  I think he was at his best in quieter moments; his dramatic chops were well-used as the frequently heartbroken and disappointed Phillip and his best jokes were understated.  Rodrigo Santoro wasn't funny, but he was better than his role of (essentially) Handsome Man Number 1 required.  Leslie Mann was fine as Steven's ex-wife; she had some good lines, but she was also the character that asked the obligatory ignorant gay questions. 

Example: "If gay means happy, then why do you cry so much?"

I Love You Phillip Morris is the directorial debut of co-writers Glenn Ficarra and John Requa.  I have trouble assessing the direction in comedies sometimes, because it is so easy (and usually rewarding) for a director to go for a joke instead of the story.  That trouble is amplified when the directors are also the writers.  Still, I think Ficarra and Requa did a pretty good job with Phillip Morris.  They obviously got along with the principal actors well and were smart enough to balance abrasive sexual jokes with some solid emotional content.

My favorite raunchy joke: "Golf?  Why don't you just eat pussy?"

What limits the movie is that the script isn't that great.  Yes, it is balanced (for a comedy), but there were an awful lot of jokes that were more shocking than funny.  I like dick jokes as much as the next guy, but I'm also over the age of thirteen and can handle more complex material.  Ficarra and Requa stuck with what got them the gig --- writing Bad Santa and the Bad News Bears remake --- but they need a little bit more to make the transition from "decently amusing" to "genuinely funny."

Fancy underoos are a start

I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting with I Love You Phillip Morris.  Once I figured out that it wasn't about cigarettes, I mean.  It was pleasantly raunchy in a way that I haven't seen in mainstream movies in a while.  It had a protagonist with realistic and understandable obstacles to overcome.  The supporting cast was good.  I would even call it "cute" if there were fewer audible moments of fellatio.  I guess I was hoping for something that was trying to be funny more than shocking.  I know, I know...the shocking parts are the funny parts.  They just weren't funny enough for me.

Last Man Standing

One of my all-time favorite movies is the Sergio Leone spaghetti Western A Fistful of Dollars.  There's just something innately appealing about a cocky loner who knows exactly how bad-ass he is.  When I realized that Leone stole his plot from Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo, I went out of my way to find that movie.  It turns out that it is awesome, too.  Go figure, a legendary director made a good movie.  So, when I found Last Man Standing, which takes Yojimbo's plot and appears to give it a noir spin, I figured it was a can't miss scenario.  Apparently, only awesome directors can make good movies from this story.

The obviously alias-using John Smith (Bruce Willis) enters the border town of Jericho, Texas sometime during Prohibition.  The town is virtually deserted of decent folk.  The only normal people left are the wimpy sheriff (Bruce Dern), a kooky bartender (William Sanderson), and the town undertaker.  The only other people in town are split between two warring gangs, the Strozzi gang and the Doyle gang.  Smith happens to be ridiculously proficient with his handguns, and not very shy about demonstrating his talents.  With two violently opposed sides, Smith sees an opportunity to play both sides against the middle and make a lot of money in the process.  In short time, the bodies start piling up and both sides are clamoring for Smith's services.  But how long can one man manipulate so many violent people?

It's a pretty basic plot, and it's been done before.  How is Last Man Standing supposed to stand out from its predecessors?  Well, if nothing else, this movie has more recognizable actors in it that its more famous fore-bearers.  Bruce Willis is decent as the quiet tough guy; you've seen Willis as an action hero before, but this script is pretty devoid of quips, so he just has to look tough.  He does that.  He also looks tired, and I'm not sure if that was an intentional choice.  Bruce Dern and William Sanderson were okay as morally neutral supporting characters, but Dern could have done a lot more with his character and Sanderson's wackiness was occasionally annoying.  As far as the gangsters went, Michael Imperioli got to be a whiny Italian mobster; this movie does show how far he came before The Sopranos started, but it's a role he has played many times in his career.  David Patrick Kelly wasn't bad as Doyle, but he didn't have much of a character to play; he wasn't psychotic, for a change, though.  On the other hand, he's only entertaining when he's psychotic.

Bruce Willis, come out to PLAAEEEEEEAAAAYYYY!

Christopher Walken is the only man in town who is in Smith's league, as far as being dangerous goes.  This sounds like an easy role for Walken, but they decided to give him some scarring and a weird voice, so all his typical awesomeness is lost as he whispered all his lines.  You might also recognize R.D. Call as a frequent supporting gangster or Leslie Mann as a hooker, but neither is particularly compelling.

How can you screw up a villainous Walken?!?

But back to Walken.  How do you make a movie with one of the most audibly distinct actors of this era and mangle his voice?  That's like making a Megan Fox movie that doesn't treat her like an object.  That's like having Fred Astaire acting in a wheelchair.  That's like forcing Jean-Claude Van Damme to not do a roundhouse kick-to-the-face in a movie.  In other words, it's not the way the world should work, people.  You know what would have been a better choice for this movie?  Having him talk like any of these people:

Tosh.0	Tuesdays 10pm / 9c
Asian Christopher Walken Mash-Up
tosh.comedycentral.com
Tosh.0 Videos Daniel Tosh Web Redemption

Walken's voice isn't the only odd thing about Last Man Standing.  Director and writer Walter Hill made several bizarre choices as he adapted this classic Kurosawa story.  It starts with the narration.  Smith is a man of few words, so having him narrate the story seems a bit unnatural.  His narration is barely inflected, too, so it sounds like he's bored as he explains himself.  And, even though Smith is narrating his own story, he doesn't actually give the viewer any insight into his grand schemes.  Any one of those aspects would make the narration bad, but all together they make for some painful viewing.  Beyond the narration, there is a matter of the action.  Yes, there is a lot of action, in the form of gunfights, in this movie.  Some of it is okay.  The rest is either exaggerated or simply dull.  I'm not a stickler for realism in my super-violent gunfights, but even I can tell when something is blatantly wrong.  I don't know much about guns, but I find it hard to believe that Smith's two handguns could lift any grown man off his feet with a blast to the chest.  And he must have had magical magazine clips for his guns, since they only ran out after he finished killing everyone.

His guns are powered by male pattern baldness.

There's plenty of other dumb stuff, too --- why did the guys at the beginning, who wanted Smith to leave town, ruin his car?  When the bad guys get the upper hand, why don't they kill Smith?  They know everything he knows.  Why are armed men immune to Tommy gun bullets?  To be honest, none of that is terribly important, because the entertainment stops well before any of those questions start to bug the logic center of your brain.

Here's a Google image I found looking for "last man standing."  This picture is more entertaining than this movie.

Last Man Standing has a solid story at its core, but making the lead character tired and humorless doesn't bring out the best in the script.  I love the story this screenplay is based on.  I like movies where gangs fight each other.  I like tough guys that narrate their stories and kill lots of mean people.  But I need to enjoy watching it.  This movie is dreary and emotionless.  The action is nothing special, so the one saving grace it might have had amounts to nothing.  I know that Bruce Willis is not in consistently good movies, but I'm not usually bored watching him; when you take away his smirk and quips, though, you're not left with much to watch.  I was hoping that this would be an underappreciated gem with its pedigree, but this film is just poor.

And, just because this movie depressed me, here's something to cheer me up.  Yes, that's Sharon Stone.