Entertainment

Do ask, do tell: Carrey shines in gay love story

Jim Carrey plays a gay con man in “I Love You Phillip Morris,” his first bio-pic since he portrayed Andy Kaufman in the underrated “Man in the Moon” (1999) and his most out-there performance since “The Cable Guy” (1996) — two of the biggest flops of his career.

While I can’t imagine the darkly hilarious comedy “Phillip Morris” will do much better — the considerable gay sexual content will challenge Carrey’s fanboy base, not to mention audiences used to his family-friendly fare — it’s a welcome alternative to the homogenized Hollywood releases that proliferate during the holiday season.

“This really happened,” says an opening credit, anticipating incredulity at the unbelievable story that follows. “It really did.”

Carrey gives his best performance since “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (2004) as Steven Russell, a religiously devout Georgia policeman and father of two (Leslie Mann plays his understanding wife) who comes flaming out of the closet after a near-death experience — the first, it turns out, of several.

The newly flamboyant Steven moves to Florida, where he acquires a hunky boyfriend (Rodrigo Santoro) and, posing as an accountant, starts robbing his employer blind to support his extravagant lifestyle.

Arrested for an earlier embezzlement, Steven is extradited and imprisoned in Texas, where he falls head over heels for an effeminate fellow inmate named Phillip Morris (Ewan McGregor, in a performance even more courageous than Carrey’s).

What follows is a series of ever-more-extreme con jobs — Steven is particularly adept at impersonating lawyers and prison personnel — as our hero tries to continue living with the love of his life despite the best effort of law-enforcement authorities to separate them.

As written and directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (the screenwriters of “Bad Santa”), it’s basically a live-action Warner Bros. cartoon spiced with frequent explicit gay sexual references — with poor Steven absorbing as much physical abuse as Elmer Fudd and Wile E. Coyote combined.

A truly wacky plea for tolerance of homosexuality and possibly larceny, the candy-colored “I Love You Phillip Morris” is such an endearing oddity that you have to wonder exactly for whom it was made. But I’m glad they did nonetheless.