The Invention of Lying 2009
This is a B- movies with occasional moments of A+ material. Those great moments center around Ricky Gervais and showcase his amazing screen persona of stammering, double-takes, and side comments and in one case provides some amazing religious satire. The central idea is fun: humanity has never invented lying or even fiction and Gervais plays a movie writer (all movies are just people reading history books). Somehow Gervais overcomes evolution and starts lying (they don’t even have a word for truth or lying in the movie). The other part of this society is that people are brutally honest. If people think you are a loser or ugly, they have to tell you, so beautiful people are constantly having their egos pumped up and ugly people are pounded with the “loser” tag (not entirely unlike Thailand now that I think of it).
So there is a decent amount of humor from both the incredibly easy and primitive lying as well as the brutally honest comments. But there is also this kind of misplaced romantic comedy plotline at the center with Jennifer Garner that doesn’t particularly work. When the movie strays away from the premise of truth and lying, it loses steam. Even the truth and lying is more of a hook than something you can base the whole movie on. I feel like an opportunity was lost, but maybe this could only work as a skit or series of skits.
Still, the movie is worth watching just to see how the premise is fleshed out and for a couple of great scenes with Ricky Gervais.
Written: 26 Jun 2010