I Love You Phillip Morris (2010) poster
2010 · comedy · crime · drama · romance

I Love You Phillip Morris

Directed by Glenn Ficarra, John Requa1h 38m2010
ElsewhereIMDb6.6102kRT71%Metacritic65
  • brisk
Movie DNA

Neutral, kinetic, measured comedy / crime, grounded in texture. Ambivalent, intimate, measured, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

How every film is hand-scored →

Steven Russell leads a seemingly average life – an organ player in the local church, happily married to Debbie, and a member of the local police force. That is until he has a severe car accident that leads him to the ultimate epiphany: he’s gay and he’s going to live life to the fullest – even if he has to break the law to do it. Taking on an extravagant lifestyle, Steven turns to cons and fraud to make ends meet and is eventually sent to the State Penitentiary where he meets the love of his life, a sensitive, soft-spoken man named Phillip Morris. His devotion to freeing Phillip from jail and building the perfect life together prompts him to attempt (and often succeed at) one impossible con after another.

Our read · I Love You Phillip Morris (2010) reads as a neutral, kinetic, grounded comedy · crime · drama entry — measured in intensity, intimate in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

Where the cast leads
Where to watch
Not on streaming here right now.Check JustWatch Check Letterboxd
More info & search links
Fingerprint

The shape of I Love You Phillip Morris

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want a wild true-ish con-man romance that's funny and strangely tender.

ends warmit stays with youa rollercoastergrips by minute 8attention 4/5breezes by
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around
Heads-upexplicit sexdrug usecringe humiliation

Skip it tonightPrison scams and sexuality played for chaotic comedy aren't your mood.

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
Your take
Rate it
star-clip-1-0star-clip-2-0star-clip-3-0star-clip-4-0star-clip-5-0
React
Discussion

Discussion

cmd enter to post

What does your Movie DNA look like?

Rate a few films you've seen. We map your taste across the same twelve axes and find the films you'll actually want to watch tonight.

Calibrate yourself