Essentially, the entire review of I Love You, Phillip Morris can be condensed into a single sentence: Imagine Catch Me If You Can with a gay love story thrown in. That’s basically it. What? I have to elaborate? Why?! Sigh.

Ok, so Jim Carrey’s protagonist is based on the real events of the gloriously bizarre life and times of fraudster Steven Jay Russell. When we first encounter Russell, he is a happily married police officer with a daughter, but he is soon forced to come out of the closet and embarks on a lavish, flamboyantly expensive lifestyle. So expensive, in fact, that he resorts to increasingly desperate and, indeed, increasingly ingenious scams.

Alas, our hero is inevitably apprehended by the authorities and incarcerated, where Russell utilises still more audacious schemes to escape. The scams and schemes are some of the best things about the film. Ridiculously brilliant and repeatedly laugh-out-loud funny, they also allow Carrey to revel in his over-the-top persona and show his absolute mastery of comic timing, while the direction of writer-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa is also first-rate.
 

It is when he is first imprisoned that Russell meets the love interest, the eponymous Phillip Morris. In comedic terms this character would normally be called the ‘straight man’ but I suppose in the context of this movie such a sobriquet might not be a propos! Regardless, Ewan McGregor portrays Phillip in a suitably low key way, making a good foil for the outlandish behaviour of Carrey’s character. Once Russell and Morris meet, the emphasis of the story is on their attempts to stay together in spite of Russell’s frequent problems with the law.

Featuring some utterly fantastic writing and a simply phenomenal performance from Carrey, I Love You, Phillip Morris is sure to be one of the best and most memorable comedies of the year. One could be forgiven for initial doubts as to whether two straight men could convincingly portray a homosexual love story – but then Neil Patrick Harris manages to play an insatiable heterosexual practically every week in How I Met Your Mother, so it’s a fairly spurious worry. In any case, Carrey and McGregor pull it off perfectly.

Bold, romantic, daring, sweet, wonderfully dark and joyously funny, I Love You, Phillip Morris is a fast-paced riot that will keep you hooked and laughing right till the end.

- Sebastian Clare