Based
on a true story "I Love You Phillip Morris" has you believe, and even
states, that being gay is a very expensive proposition, leading someone
to steal thousands of dollars as a CFO, commit credit card fraud and even impersonating a lawyer to get your lover out of prison.

It takes 2 directors, John Requa and Glenn Ficarra, who also wrote the screenplay, to fail to reign in Jim Carrey's performance as the con man Steven Russell. They fail to give a set
theme to the movie, as if they were undecided whether it should be about
the love affair between Steven and Phillip Morris, played by Ewan McGregor, making it a romantic comedy or an expose of a gay psychopath schemer highlighting the "Catch Me If You Can" aspect.

This
is not a film that will play in the mid-west and/or bible belt as we
still haven't reached the point where showing sex scenes between two men
is shrugged off as a sex scene between opposite sex actors is, not to
mention having the titillation of a lesbian sex scene such as the one in "The Black Swan" holds for the audience.

The film opens with Steven Russell as a married man with two children, a church going policeman
living in a small town. He then has an almost fatal car accident which
gives him the epiphany that he is a gay man though there are a couple of
hints, including having sex with a man, that would/should have told him
that before. Next we see him in South Beach with a hunky lover, played by Rodrigo Santoro,
and wanting to give the latter a 'high on the hog' lifestyle leads the
former to start his schemes and scams. When the lover dies of AIDS,
which Steven uses as one of his more successful cons later on, he goes
off the deep end winds up in prison and meets the love his life, Phillip
Morris.

It is this love that leads to more elaborate schemes and plans that Steven pulls off such becoming that CFO and embezzling
hundreds of thousands of dollars so the lovers could live with Steven
taking care of everything. Phillip is a delicate, Southern male belle
who, probably in all innocence, doesn't know what his lover is up to until it is too late.

There
are romantic scenes like Steven and Phillip dancing to Johnny Mathis
singing "Chances Are" in their jail cell while a riot breaks out or when
Phillip finds out that Steven has AIDS, which is his biggest personal
scheme, or their at home moments but there is no chemistry between the
two men which works against the film.

Carrey has his maniac moments which, as always, he puts across, providing the
audience with a few good laughs  and he hits the right notes in the more
serious moments but he hasn't found out who Steven Russell is which
takes away from the film and his performance. McGregor has a thankless role and is not given a moment to shine as this is a 'Jim Carrey" movie.

In
the beginning credits it says that this is an 'improbable but true love
story' and the directors/writers, and Jim Carrey, go for the improbable
more than trying to make it a true love story.