Word: Boyd van Hoeij

Even with the title being such a blatant a declaration of love, it comes as kind of a shock that, yes, I Love You Phillip Morris is indeed a love story. Who would have thought that the directorial debut of screenwriters Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, who penned the hilariously badass Bad Santa with a perennially drunk Billy Bob Thornton as a Santa impersonator, were really lovey-dovey romantics at heart?

Of course, this being a Ficarra-Requa movie, there is plenty of absolutely over-the-top humour, various shock tactics — anal sex with major Hollywood star alert! — and many other downright batshit crazy ideas (many lifted directly, it must be noted, from reality). But the angle they’ve decided on to tell the story of the real-life swindler and gay con artist Steven Jay Russell (Jim Carrey) is through his intense devotion for the angelic (Ewan McGregor), whom he meets in prison, where both men are doing time.

When Russell is transferred to another facility, the other just has to break out of prison in order to be with his loved one. And it won’t be the last or most spectacular prison escape Russell has engineered either. Swindling is like a second nature to him, and as he notes in the hilarious, prolonged prologue: Being gay is expensive, so there’s a good reason he’s forging all those checks! He also sees strange shapes in the sky, has a car accident, comes out to his born-again Christian wife and romances Rodrigo Santoro in Miami, and that’s just the first couple of minutes!

This is nothing if not a rollercoaster of politically incorrect, often laugh-out-loud funny jokes that often shouldn’t work but somehow do. Carrey, who has shown in the past he is also a capable dramatic actor, is again in excellent shape here, and McGregor plays doe-eyed puppy like no one’s business. The production, shot on a low budget in New Orleans, far from the Hollywood studio system that didn’t dare make this movie even with two big stars, looks a lot more expensive than it is. And if this makes you think you’re being swindled by Ficarra and Requa in their directorial debut, then you don’t know the half of it.