The uncensored trailer for I Love You Phillip Morris is every bit as dirty as you’ve heard. But it offers more than just a shot of Jim Carrey pounding some guy from behind. It offers an exciting social statement.
(The following is NSFW)
The Movie: I Love You Phillip Morris (in theaters Feb. 5, 2010)
The Buzz: This based-on-a-true-story comedy features Jim Carrey as a gay con artist who goes to prison and falls for Ewan McGregor. Hijinks and man kissing ensue.
The Trailer:
The Review:
So here’s the thing: Movies like Milk and Brokeback Moutain and Boys Don’t Cry make strong cultural arguments. By treating doomed or troubled queer characters with empathy, they assert that America needs to make room in its heart for the LGBT community. Milk even convincingly casts Harvey Milk as the martyred hero of a decades-long civil rights movement, granting cinematic dignity not only to his life, but also to the millions of people who have been inspired by it.
But what happens when a movie’s gay heroes aren’t nobly suffering? Or don’t get executed? What happens when they do unlovable things, don’t obviously inspire anyone, and still get to be the hero?
This trailer is asking those questions.
Jim Carrey’s character is a total freak. He steals, he lies, he cons, and he has wild gay sex. Apparently, he also falls in tender, honest love with Ewan McGregor’s title character, but that love doesn’t change him. It doesn’t transform him into a silently suffering cowboy or a reawakened political leader. It just makes him con people in order to be with his boyfriend.
In other words, this trailer doesn’t treat gayness like something that must be gauzed in pain in order to be worthy. It asks us instead to laugh with queer characters as they do stupid and/or despicable things. It implicitly trusts that we can enjoy flawed gay characters without assuming that all gay people are flawed.
And in minority culture, that willingness to show your faults is a big deal. As Tracey Scott Wilson said when I interviewed her for The New York Times, black Americans still pressure each other to be “the good negro,” meaning the black person who is so perfect that he or she is impervious to racism. That happens in the gay community, too: There can be an expectation that if you’re going to be in public, then you need to be so saintly, so noble, and perhaps so tragically inspiring that no hompohobic charge can possibly apply.
That’s an exhausting standard, and as much as I love them, the Milks and Brokebacks of the world help maintain it. In just two minutes, however, the Phillip Morris preview delivers a gay hero who is screwed up all over the place, and it still presents him as someone worth rooting for. (That’s what the trailer for Transamerica does too, but to a gentler degree.)
Nor does this trailer have that Brüno vibe, where the gay character’s outlandishness is meant to force a heterosexual dupe into some kind of gross revelation about his or her own prejudice. This trailer is asking us to identify with Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor, not feel berated by them.
I’m heartened to see that. If major stars are playing gay characters who are screwed up and human and cool, then maybe times really are a-changing.
But will there be a large audience for this movie, or will its apparently unapologetic and aggressive sexuality, which could make the gay characters seem threatening, turn off mainstream America? There have already been reports that the film needed a recut in order to attract its American distributor, and the release date (next February) doesn’t suggest high finanical hopes.
And since this is the trailer that was released for the Cannes Film Festival, should we expect something less overtly gay to hit American theaters?
Whatever happens, at least we have this brief vision of what might be.
The Rating:Five Cowboy Hats Without Blood on Them
9 responses so far ↓
1 Laura Mc. // Jul 21, 2009 at 1:35 pm
How does the gay thing lead to the shopping compulsion? Not understanding that transition..
Ewan is loving these roles lately. Last big role in “Scenes of a Sexual Nature” was of him as a gorgeous, coiffured gay guy who was full of charm.. Now, he can add betrayal to this trope?
Yes, I am really chewing on the casting. When Jim Carrey does comedy, it is usually of this variety of satire and ridiculousness. So, even though the plot implies some form of progress for Hollywood’s plots of gay characters, I think the casting brings us right back to where we started in that neither of these actors are known for their sincerity when they really get going in these stories.
So, the question for me is are we laughing with Jim or at Jim? Without sincerity, it is not an empathic laugh.. so the idea that we are endeared to his struggle doesn’t quite hit the bullseye. Maybe one day? When rom com giants like Jennifer Aniston and Rachel McAdams can explore their hidden love, this movie can claim it’s a trend setter..
2 Mark Blankenship // Jul 21, 2009 at 2:27 pm
I don’t know, Laura… Carrey was sincere in “The Truman Show,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” and “Man on the Moon,” and though it was flashy, McGregor wasn’t goofing in “Moulin Rouge!”
Really, it’s too soon to tell if the movie will be empathetic or mocking. Despite what the trailer implies, the actual film could end up like “I Know Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.” But since it was selected for Cannes, I suspect it won’t.
Whatever the movie is, though, the trailer is showing a world gay people have power and complexity. That idea is being presented as a selling point… as something that might get mainstream butts into theaters. And that’s pretty cool.
3 Laura Mc. // Jul 21, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Yes, but those roles were not Jim Carrey’s brand of *humor.* I think when Jim Carrey goes for the laugh the audience is required to trivialize the complexities of his character along the lines of “Me, Myself, and Irene” or “Liar Liar.” The gritty problems any normal person facing these problems would encounter are ignored or trivialized for the sake of the movie (yes), but also for the sake of landing his particular brand of joke.
His comedic style does the opposite of amplify complexities because he spends so much of those precious 90 minutes mugging and falling down stairs and grinning so broadly we can count his teeth.
But, like you say, too soon too soon. It’s always in celebrities’ interests to shake up what we expect from them. So, maybe this film will give us what has always struck me as silly and alienating about Jim Carrey and couple that with something that goes a little deeper.
4 Mark Blankenship // Jul 21, 2009 at 3:27 pm
I hope so, too! It would be great to see him tackle broad comedy and produce something different than his usual silliness… at least considering how that silliness would apply to this movie.
Though I’ve got to say… I do love “Liar, Liar.”
5 Michael // Jul 28, 2009 at 8:31 pm
Gotta say, Mark–I see NOTHING in this ad that suggests we are invited to feel WITH Jim Carrey: he looks like he’s mugging his way through another extravagant goof. In a way, though, I get the idea that there’s another level of humor here: a kind of parody of overly sincere, tear-jerking coming out stories: instead of a painful growing self-awareness, this guy goes gay by coming out of a coma, and goes into every cliche regarding that new identity–fashion-obsession, sexual indulgence, materialism, hot-pants self-display. That he would end up in prison and fall in love with a fellow con (shades of Oz), complete with the shampoo-commercial-lit kisses and slow-mo tossing hair seems to be about more of the same set of cliches. It’s funny, but it’s hardly a new the impression a new level of three-dimensional characterization; it’s satirical. The feeling I get is that Carrey’s character is so content-free, he can only go through a major internal transition by tastelessly running through extreme stereotypes. I get the idea that that’s the joke. And it’s a worthy joke. But your idea that it’s about a newly complex characterization of gay men?–wishful thinking, I fear.
6 Mark Blankenship // Jul 28, 2009 at 11:02 pm
Well, Michael, even if Carrey’s character does end up being content free, he would still fulfill the role I’m trying to define… he would be gay without being tragic or a blatant target for homophobic derision.
And I don’t see anything here that says we’re meant to laugh at Carrey’s character simply because he’s gay, the way we’re meant to chortle at Bronson Pinchot’s character in “Beverly Hills Cop.”
And if we get a gay hero who is a total conman freak, and who exists as a satirical figure, and who is still the hero of the film… then I’d argue that IS a “newly complex characterization.” If we’re not supposed to like Carrey’s character, but we’re not supposed hate simply because he’s gay, then I’d call that progress. Let me hate a character who HAPPENS to be gay. It means gay people, in that movie at least, get to exist just like everyone else.
Again, I don’t know what the entire movie will convey, but I stand by my reading of the trailer. Plus, I don’t think it’s that different from yours.
As always, of course, I appreciate your thoughtful response!
7 Michael // Jul 29, 2009 at 11:30 am
@Mark: Back atcha, natch. I think that–IF I understand our discrete readings of the clues in the trailer correctly–you see the film as a possible step forward because it’s a comic, rascally, non-tragic evocation of a gay character, whereas I see it as a possible step forward because it’s pranking on gay cliches, including, at one level, the superficial, fashion-forward tropes of gay stereotypes, and, at another level, spoofing the sentimentally sincere romantic story of coming out: not just refusing to be tragic, but go further and aggressively mocking the assumptions of that kind of sentimentality. If I’m anywhere near right, I bet it will offend some very earnest people. We’ll see if I’m one of them.
8 Mark Blankenship // Jul 29, 2009 at 11:35 am
@Michael. Agreed!
9 Michael // Jul 29, 2009 at 11:37 am
I think where we differ is that, in your reading, we may be invited to laugh at a character who just happens to be gay (echoes of George Carlin are in my head), whereas I suspect we’re being invited to laugh at a character exactly because of his specific gayness–that is, because he’s going about being gay in ridiculous, lame, laughable ways. It will be interesting to see!
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