You may have seen the trailer for the latest Jim Carrey comedy, I Love You Phillip Morris. If so, I’d advise you to quit while you’re ahead. Like most comedy trailers, it cannily includes most of the film’s funniest moments. This has always struck me as a kind of misrepresentation: the trailer is supposed to give you a taste of what the film is really like, not delude you with a reel of highlights that ends up being more enjoyable than the film itself. I Love You Phillip Morris is in fact not such a blatant example of false advertising in this respect: the film is in fact more than the sum of its comic moments as revealed by the trailer. But what the film actually turns out to be is nonetheless somewhat different from what the trailer led me to expect.
The trailer for this film is unusual in that it appears to offer an exact chronological summary of everything that happens in the film: Steven Russell (Carrey) begins as a devout Christian family man, suddenly embraces his true flamboyantly gay self, becomes a scam artist and ends up in prison, where he meets and falls in love with a man named Phillip Morris. Although it is typical for the trailer to introduce the film’s characters and outline what is at stake, few trailers summarize the narrative in such a straightforward way: its openness therefore seems calculated to catch the audience’s attention. Of course, a comedy does not risk very much by revealing its plot: suspense matters little when viewers are most interested in observing the behavior of their favorite comic actors in awkward situations. This is why most comedy trailers focus on providing a sampler of the film’s comic scenes, while the plot of the film works as a collection of pegs on which to hang these scenes.
The chronological plot summary of Phillip Morris’s trailer is in fact misleading, as the film’s narrative is not that simple: beginning with Steven lying in a hospital bed on the verge of death, the film is based on a series of flashbacks. There is more suspense than the trailer would have you believe, as the audience is led to wonder how Steven ended up in the hospital. Moreover, at the very point when it seems that the film is answering this question, the audience is being misled along with the film’s other characters. At this point, a new flashback reveals the mechanism behind Steven’s biggest trick of all, before Phillip Morris concludes with a few events that take place in the film’s present.
Phillip Morris’s trailer is unusually misleading in one other respect: as it seems to give away the film’s narrative arc completely, the audience might reasonably expect the film to expand on the trailer’s bare-bones plot. In fact, it feels as though the film whizzes through Steven’s metamorphosis from conventional family man to flashy con man as quickly as the trailer did. I assumed that the trailer’s images of Steven as a fashionable and body-conscious gay man were a teaser, and that the film would offer many more scenes showing Carrey in this camp persona, a novel one for him. What I actually saw was a conventional Carrey film: in other words, I saw Carrey taking on a series of irritatingly exaggerated personas.
One unusual aspect of this film was the way in which it treated homosexuality: a mainstream comedy featuring gay men typically sets out to make fun of them. When Steven openly embraces his homosexuality, Carrey initially acts out this side of Steven’s character in an exaggerated way, with a clichéd camp persona. However, the emphasis quickly shifts to the fact that Steven is a talented con artist, and for most of the film it is this aspect of Steven’s character that Carrey presents in an exaggerated way: an extreme earnestness coupled with an extreme deviousness. Once Carrey makes this shift from exaggerating Steven’s homosexuality to exaggerating his deceptiveness, the film treats the relationship between Steven and Phillip tenderly rather than mocking it. Even if this comedy is unusually enlightened in its attitude to homosexuality, the format of the comedy is not as original as it may seem: the all-too-familiar jokes and sexual innuendo of conventional (romantic) comedies are there, simply adapted to suit a relationship between two men.
Perhaps the most original element of this comedy, however, is how serious it is. As ads for the film are at pains to emphasize, the film is based on a true story: the conclusion reveals that Steven is currently serving a life sentence, the harshness of his punishment reflecting the extreme embarrassment of the state authorities whom he fooled so many times. I can’t think of another film that has used straightforward comedy to present a true story with the aim of gaining the audience’s sympathy for a real person. However, I believe that this approach will backfire. Carrey’s overwrought acting creates a separation between the audience and the character. The film raises the point that Steven may never have had a stable sense of self: if this is the case, perhaps Carrey was appropriately cast. Yet if Carrey’s acting can’t create a sense of connection between the audience and the main character, how can the film succeed in making its political point? Even with names and dates provided, the audience may still find it difficult to believe that Steven really exists.
Trailer
