In December of last year we saw an extended (3-minute plus) French promo reel for I Love You, Phillip Morris. Now there’s another trailer coming out of France that very likely will be a lot like what we get to see in the US closer to the film’s February 2010 opening. Starring Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor, I Love You, Philip Morris is a love story, a prison break story and a con man movie all in one. It did incredibly well at Sundance, and evidently for good reason: it looks fantastic and wildly entertaining. See the clip after the break.

This trailer is shorter and punchier than the extended clip. It gets a lot more of the plot and structure across, where the long clip was a bit more indulgent of the main character. Carrey plays Steven Russell, a nice married guy who basically wakes up gay, and dives headfirst into the full image-oriented aspect of the lifestyle. To fund his new fashion taste and romantic exploits, he turns into a con man; in fact, as Peter noted before, the movie was pitched at one point as a Catch Me If You Can meets Brokeback Mountain. When Russell ends up in jail, he meets Phillip Morris (McGregor) and the two quickly fall in love. When Morris is transferred away from Russell, the besotted inmate stages a series of wild prison break efforts to reconnect with the love of his life.

If the movie is half as energetic as this trailer suggests, it should live up to the early hype. This certainly does a lot more to push the movie than the execrable yellow poster, seen in part above. And, I should note, this (being a European trailer) is slightly NSFW. Not super NSFW, but just a little bit. Be sure to watch it at home eventually, though, because it rocks.

[via CHUD]