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THE INVENTION OF LYING
Ricky Gervais is a funny guy, to which anyone who has seen him host the Golden Globes can attest, but he really misses the boat with a 2009 comic fantasy he co-wrote and co-directed called The Invention of Lying that starts off promisingly but just doesn't work due to a problematic premise not properly established and some disturbing mixed messages the story sends.
This story is allegedly set in a world that has been created in Gervais' mind that really doesn't exist. Gervais' opening narration informs us that this story takes place in a world where everyone tells the truth and there is no such thing as a lie. It's sort of like the premise of White Man's Burden where we are told that black men are the superior race and whites are the victims of bigotry and racism. Gervais' Mark Bellinger is an unemployed screenwriter whose life is systematically going down the toilet and he tells the world's first lie ever in order to avoid him getting evicted from his apartment. Mark continues to use the concept of lying to improve his life, even to the point where he becomes a contemporary messiah who is the only person on the planet with the real dirt on the existence of God.
Gervais and co-director/co screenwriter Matthew Robinson have the germ of a really good idea here, but it's not properly developed. Maybe the power of lying would have had a little more legitimacy if Gervais had taken a little more time to show us what a world is like where everyone tells the truth. We do see some amusing skirting of accustomed small talk and some insensitive insulting that on the surface is funny, but it seems that a world where no one ever tells a lie would be a lot different than the one we live in and we never get that feeling here. Not to mention the fact that when Mark tells his first lie, it's a lie that really shouldn't have worked to his advantage the way it did here, making it hard to invest in the rest of the story.
And the rest of the story is no prize either as Gervais and Robinson are asking us to sit back and blithely accept quite a bit here. I had difficulty watching this unemployed writer become rich and famous through this new skill called lying. On the other hand, there is a contradictory theme in the story that no matter how many lies you tell and no matter how powerful they make you, that power is meaningless if you're ugly, which seems to be more of a personal jab Gervais might be making at Hollywood's treatment of him rather than a pure idea for this troublesome film.
On the positive side, Gervais has managed to assemble an impressive cast to help pull off this highly improbable story. Jennifer Garner is an appealing leading lady and seems to understand what Gervais is trying to do here. The rest of the "Spot the star" cast includes Tina Fey, Jeffrey Tambor, Jason Bateman, Edward Norton, Rob Lowe, Louis CK, Jonah Hill, Christopher Guest, and the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman, but it's all for naught since from the moment the first lie in the story is told, the selected laughs up to that point sadly diminish. Gervais fans should just go to You Tube and watch reruns of the Golden Globes.
Ricky Gervais is a funny guy, to which anyone who has seen him host the Golden Globes can attest, but he really misses the boat with a 2009 comic fantasy he co-wrote and co-directed called The Invention of Lying that starts off promisingly but just doesn't work due to a problematic premise not properly established and some disturbing mixed messages the story sends.
This story is allegedly set in a world that has been created in Gervais' mind that really doesn't exist. Gervais' opening narration informs us that this story takes place in a world where everyone tells the truth and there is no such thing as a lie. It's sort of like the premise of White Man's Burden where we are told that black men are the superior race and whites are the victims of bigotry and racism. Gervais' Mark Bellinger is an unemployed screenwriter whose life is systematically going down the toilet and he tells the world's first lie ever in order to avoid him getting evicted from his apartment. Mark continues to use the concept of lying to improve his life, even to the point where he becomes a contemporary messiah who is the only person on the planet with the real dirt on the existence of God.
Gervais and co-director/co screenwriter Matthew Robinson have the germ of a really good idea here, but it's not properly developed. Maybe the power of lying would have had a little more legitimacy if Gervais had taken a little more time to show us what a world is like where everyone tells the truth. We do see some amusing skirting of accustomed small talk and some insensitive insulting that on the surface is funny, but it seems that a world where no one ever tells a lie would be a lot different than the one we live in and we never get that feeling here. Not to mention the fact that when Mark tells his first lie, it's a lie that really shouldn't have worked to his advantage the way it did here, making it hard to invest in the rest of the story.
And the rest of the story is no prize either as Gervais and Robinson are asking us to sit back and blithely accept quite a bit here. I had difficulty watching this unemployed writer become rich and famous through this new skill called lying. On the other hand, there is a contradictory theme in the story that no matter how many lies you tell and no matter how powerful they make you, that power is meaningless if you're ugly, which seems to be more of a personal jab Gervais might be making at Hollywood's treatment of him rather than a pure idea for this troublesome film.
On the positive side, Gervais has managed to assemble an impressive cast to help pull off this highly improbable story. Jennifer Garner is an appealing leading lady and seems to understand what Gervais is trying to do here. The rest of the "Spot the star" cast includes Tina Fey, Jeffrey Tambor, Jason Bateman, Edward Norton, Rob Lowe, Louis CK, Jonah Hill, Christopher Guest, and the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman, but it's all for naught since from the moment the first lie in the story is told, the selected laughs up to that point sadly diminish. Gervais fans should just go to You Tube and watch reruns of the Golden Globes.