This pile of junk has been sitting on the shelves for a very long time awaiting cinematic distribution — no doubt due to some of the thematic content, but also because it is a ship without a sail or an anchor — I very much doubt that any audience will pull it into shore. Jim Carrey and Ewan MacGregor star in a bizarre movie that makes a number of fundamentally fatal flaws. The film tries to be funny… tries to be romantic… tries to be charming… but it cannot manage any of that because of the seedy and despicable lead character. “I Love You Phillip Morris” is a film with more identities than Jim Carrey’s performance as the tremendously unlikable con-man, Steven Russell. It is a schizophrenic jumble with characters impossible to empathize with or care for in any way. It tries to be energetic, but its fast pace only makes it feel like an abbreviated character study. It tries to be dark and meaningful, but fails miserably because of the surrounding tone of silliness. The film even tries to be brave, but only manages to be blindly brash. At its conclusion, one can only wonder why it was made and who it was made for.
