![]() Even calling him a fraudster doesn't describe the character Carrey plays. Is it about gay romance? Is it about a con man's criminal career? Are we, the audience, supposed to trust Steven Russell, to take him at his own estimation of himself? Steven's own lifelong identity crisis, which may stem from the traumatic discovery of having been adopted, has a parallel in the film. This movie, from writer-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa – who wrote the Billy Bob Thornton comedy Bad Santa – is intriguing, at least partly because it is not immediately clear what it is centrally about. But it isn't long before the police close in, and Steven has to demonstrate his almost superhuman talents for evading the law: shabby deceptions theoretically consecrated to his love for his beloved Phillip, who hasn't grasped how he has been made complicit and co-dependent in Steven's delusional career of lies. ![]() When his own prison term ends, Steven poses as a lawyer to get Phillip released on licence – forging documents, faking voices on the phone, and maintaining a series of inspired bluffs – and then constructs a massive, fraudulent career in both law and finance so that they can live together in luxury as a super-rich gay couple. Morris himself tells his own story in a seductive, honeyed voiceover, rather like Reese Witherspoon's narration in Alexander Payne's Election.Įlectrified by his new romance, Steven redoubles his fanatical determination to trick and manipulate the world around him to get what he believes he wants: Phillip. This is the shy, young innocent Phillip Morris, nicely played by Ewan McGregor, who, like the rest of the world, trusts the exuberant and charming Steven implicitly. Steven Russell (Carrey) is a fraudster, a hypnotically plausible fantasist, and a formerly married ex-cop who comes out as a gay man, before finally getting sent to jail in Texas for insurance scams, and there finding the love of his life. J im Carrey's rubbery, hyperreal face achieves a sheen of panic and desperate neediness in this stranger-than-fiction comedy drawn from real life. ![]()
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