What the inventors of The Invention of Lying forgot to invent was a third act. Or maybe even a second. Which is why the movie that emerges from this promising concept starts off strong and then just lies there.
Remember the Jim Carrey comedy, Liar Liar? Well, The Invention of Lying could easily have been called Liar. Or Pants on Fire. The truth of the matter is that, while it’s certainly not unpleasant, TIOL is ultimately disappointing.
The premise: Suppose no one had ever discovered that members of our species were allowed to make things up that weren’t necessarily true. Suppose honesty wasn’t just the best policy, but the only policy. Suppose nonfiction was the only kind of fiction.
Ricky Gervais’s latest comedy is a droll alternate-reality romp in which everyone tells the truth. Always. There’s no word for “truth” and no word for “lie.” There’s only what is and what isn’t. And anything that can’t actually be seen for what it is, that cannot be factually demonstrated, has no place in this universe.
Then one down-on-his-luck screenwriter of historical epics (seemingly the only kind of movies there are in this world) named Mark Bellison, played by Gervais, somehow develops the ability to prevaricate — he’s the only one on the planet who can and does — and realizes that the untruth will set him free.
Mark lies and lies, but everything he says to anybody is taken at face value, so he can now carve out his own particular path, which is to say: any path.
The one person he cannot bring himself to lie to is Anna, played by Jennifer Garner, the woman he has long loved but who has not returned his affection and indeed already rejected him. That’s why he has settled for the platonic friendship he now has with her.
The people in this world also have no concept of God until Mark, in perhaps the film’s most imaginative and audacious sequence, as he talks to his ailing mother in the hospital, introduces the idea of the “Man in the Sky,” and does no less than invent the concepts of religion and heaven. Consequently, he’s seen as a prophet.
Ricky Gervais makes his feature directorial debut in this fanciful parable-like comedy, which he also wrote, along with his writing partner, Matthew Robinson, who also served as his co-director. But perhaps Gervais’s television background (The Office, Extras) does him a disservice here in that his movie seems to house only about as much content as that required of a TV series episode.
What Gervais and Robinson have concocted is in essence a comedic Twilight Zone episode. And for about the first half-hour, the device of characters blurting out whatever they are thinking at the time and no one feeling any embarrassment no matter what gets said to or about them is a strongly beguiling wrinkle, giving the film a bracing satirical kick.
But the thin central conceit isn’t developed enough to keep up that level of amusement over the course of a feature, and the strain eventually shows, with the pacing dipping precipitously by the midway point. And the stabs at extreme sentimentality in the late going seem like acts of desperation and fail to save the day.
Tina Fey as Mark’s snippy secretary, Rob Lowe as his arrogant rival, Jonah Hill as his downbeat neighbor, Fionnula Flanagan as his sickly mother, and a slew of cameoing guest stars help, but Gervais and Garner do not generate close to enough romantic chemistry to sell that aspect of the proceedings.
Initially thought-provoking but ultimately slack and unsatisfying, The Invention of Lying is in need of a more ambitious script and a surer directorial hand. No lie.
Bill Wine – Celebrity News Service Movie Critic/ AHN
100 minutes
In theaters October 2, 2009
Rating: PG-13, Comedy
Related posts:
- The Invention of Lying Trailer
- Ricky Gervais: Lying Can Be Good
- Jennifer Garner’s 3-Year-Old Daughter Already Reads Jane Austen Novels
