The Invention of Lying

Review by Jason Gaston

 

There's literally nothing worse than a movie that hits its stride in the first ten minutes and then spends the rest of its time on the screen trying to match that first burst of brilliance.  Such is the way of The Invention of Lying which, in that first twenty minutes, hits us with the hilarious cruelty of a world where lying doesn't exists - where opinions fly out of mouths without tact or consideration and everything - even commercials - are just blatantly honest: Drink Coke, it's famous.

But then one lowly and downtrodden man played by Ricky Gervais who is getting famous for playing lowly and downtrodden men, discovers he has the ability to lie and soon, he's using it to invent fiction, religion, and anything than he thinks will make the world a better place.

Although admittedly high concept and a lot more sly than your average comedy, The Invention of Lying fails to deliver on the promise of the fist twenty minutes of showing a world devoid of mendacity and focuses, rather, on a pedestrian love story that is no where near as interesting as the premise we were told we were getting.

Ricky Gervais and Jennifer Garner plays the lead roles; Gervais as drool and dry as you would expect him to be, but Garner, for some reason or another is dressed and presented in such a way that she is probably the most unattractive that she has ever been.  Add to that that the romantic thread between the two falls flat and the pair has little to no chemistry between them, and a major piece of the movie puzzle comes up missing.

I am hardly a man of faith nor am I easily offended by anything, but The Invention of Lying goes off on a religious tangent that I would be remiss in not mentioning.  Nearly a third of the movie focuses on Gervais' invention of religion which, of course, infers that religion and faith is a lie.  That would be fine and good if the movie decided to do anything with the concept that is remotely funny, but it seems to forget at that point that it's a comedy and just goes for passive aggressive nittering.

Life of Brian and Religulous managed to poke fun of religion in a hilarious way, but The Invention of Lying handles the entire subject with a healthy dose of mean-spirited snobbery which is a major turn off.  After all, if there's a way for a comedy to endear itself to an audience, I don't think completely offending them is one of them.  Like I said, I'm no man of faith myself, but I recognize a pretentious attitude when I see it.

The Invention of Lying has its clever and witty moments, but never gets better - or even remotely in the same ballpark - as the twenty minutes of sheer genius that start it off.  As it stands now, this movie appears to be little more than a comedy show sketch stretched out over 90 minutes and, when the movie reaches the third act, it gets more and more apparent that it should have just gave up ended after those ingenious twenty minutes.