Monday, July 20, 2009

New trailer for 'I Love You, Phillip Morris'

Have you seen the int'l trailer for "I Love You, Phillip Morris," starring Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor? Shot in the New Orleans area primarily, with a couple days spent at the Louisiana Wave Studio in The Shreve.

The comedy will be released domestically in February 2010. What do you think?

10 comments:

ltlrat said...

Saw this at Sundance this year (with a Q&A with Carey and McGreggor) and have been eagerly awaiting the trailer to see how they would market it.

It represents the movie well (though he doesn't turn gay after a car wreck), and it's a strange movie. At parts it's goofy and typical Jim Carey kind of stuff, but then they also want you to take it seriously, and it has a Brokeback Mountain kind of side to it and it's a weird mix of very polarized genres, that aren't transitioned well into one another.

I left the movie confused about how I was supposed to take it. I was hoping for another dramatic outing from Jim Carey, but this was like mixing Ace Ventura and Eternal Sunshine into one movie. It was very odd. I didn't really like it.

Then again everything at Sundance tends to blur together into one really bad indie film so that might have been a contributing factor.

Anonymous said...

I think the trailer looks great. I think, though, that for American audiences, they'll have to scale back the gay a little (sad but true). I saw a teaser trailer online a while back for the film, and I thought it was much better. I looked and can't find the exact one I saw months ago. I'll have to do some digging and send it along.

I'm very interested to see the film in its entirety.

ltlrat said...

Yeah that was kind of the predicament. Jim Carey is a very mainstream comedian, but there are parts of this movie that approach a toned down Bruno (blow jobs, etc).

And I don't see most of his mainstream audience going for that...but there's just enough of his typical humor in the trailer to likely pull a lot of his audience in.

All that said, it is an interesting story. It's just a very strange presentation.

Anonymous said...

I was surprised to see a very familiar local face in the new Phillip Morris trailer. Our fellow Shreveport actor Tim Hickey apparently got a rare speaking role with Jim Carrey himself, and also made the new international trailer. Shreveport should be proud.

Unknown said...

While "Weather Girl" looked like a perfectly nice movie, it did look like a story I've seen a million times.

I'm hungry for something new. I don't believe I've ever been told a story like "I Love You, Phillip Morris." I think the con man angle just adds another layer like having the leading man being gay adds another layer.

There are too many interesting stories out there waiting to be told or documented to have to sit through the same old same old. "Jaws 54." "Rocky 75." "Transformers 8." I'm not 4 and you do not have to read me the same bedtime story word for word every night. Reach up there on that high shelf and pull down that unopened one...

Anonymous said...

Looks like the trailer is great hilarious entertainment. Some people take comedy too seriously. This is labeled a dark comedy, so just go for the ride. It is - by design- necessarily bizarre. I bet it moves people to go see it because it is not an everyday studio film. It's not a "gay" film.
It's a film designed to make an audience laugh, because the truth is often stranger than fiction. The movie is based on a true story.
I heard the DVD version will be loaded with extras and will be a collector's item.

JB Jones said...

As a gay filmmaker (wow, did I just out myself?), I get so tired of the argument that a movie might need to tone down the "gayness" to be accepted by mainstream audiences. Does Madea tone down the black? Does Edward James Olmos tone down the acne scars?

If some people can't take it, they just don't need to watch it. There is an audience for films that are not necessarily gay-agenda films that have gay protagonists. We've been watching doe-eyed girls and galant heroes fall in love for thousands of years. Can't we have something a little different?

There is an audience - it just might not be straight males between 16 and 25.

JB Jones said...

Okay, I just watched the trailer...

Honestly, I'm not sure what to make of it. I'll certainly go see the movie - out of sheer curiosity.

I mean, I like Jim Carrey. I love Ewan. Prison sex is always good. Car wrecks, con men, and shrimp on steaks - yeah, all that's cool.

But I just can't quite put my finger on what this movie is - and mostly because of that lack of knowledge is why I will go see it.

ltlrat said...

I didn't mean to sound intollerant of "gay films", though I find the idea of that being a genre in and of itself as wrong as "black films". Good drama and good comedy should work the same across the board. The "gay" elements I don't think should be as heavy to make the film into a genre in and of itself.

That's my point. I feel the same for doe-eyed girls and gallant heroes.

My problem with the film, I believe is that the "gay-ness" for lack of a better term was almost played as a joke, when it's a true story, and I felt it should have been more sincere. Jim Carey plays it up like a sketch character in parts (though it's inconsistent, which is another issue), which like Bruno becomes more of a mockery of gay stereotypes instead of what I feel like should be a relatively normal movie that happens to have characters who prefer the opposite sex...hopefully that doesn't sound too boring and you can understand my point.

Basically why does the fact that they're gay have to be the point? Rarely is the fact that someone is straight the point of a film.

I think Velvet Goldmine is one of the best movies with gay themes I've seen because it's not the point. It has gay characters and gay sex and is actually one of my favorite films but not because of those things...which is the point. It is for other reasons a great film.

I just wanted to clear that up. The movie is bizarre for other reasons than it having gay people in it.

JB Jones said...

I totally get what you are saying Evan... Like I said in my last post, I'm just not really sure what to make of this film - or of it's message (so to speak). For a moment, it seems like it's being sentimental - the next moment, it seems like it's slapstick. Very odd.