The Invention of Lying (2009)

Directed by: Ricky Gervais, Matthew Robinson
Starring: Ricky Gervais

**1/2

Having read the script prior to seeing this movie, thus knowing the story start to finish, I was somewhat pessimistic about the movie as a whole but equally enthusiastic about how funny it could be. While disappointed by the lack of laugh out loud moments, the quality of the film matched my expectations.

Mark Bellison (Gervais) is a loser and in a world where lying doesn't exist, no one is shy about reminding him of this. Imagine your life spiraling downward at a rapid pace and it only stops for everyone you know to rub salt in your wounds. This is the point Bellison is at before he stumbles upon the ability to say something that wasn't... to lie.

The idea behind this movie is brilliant but its very difficult to wrap ones head around. In a movie like Liar, Liar, which has a similar idea, just flip flopped, its easy to relate to as everyone is normal except for your main character. In Lying, everyone behaves abnormally compared to what we are used to. Its funny but when it comes to them accepting Bellison's lies as truth, its hard to remind oneself that its impossible for them to second guess anything. As hard as it is to suspend my disbelief time ten, it was equally as hard to figure out why this wasn't done well.

So many of the jokes in this film rely on people speaking one hundred percent literally. They tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. To speak so completely literally and not come across as fake or jokey proved to be very difficult for a majority of the actors. Interestingly enough, the performers who do comedy well, Gervais, Jason Batemen, Jeffrey Tambor, Jonah Hill and a couple of the surprise cameos seemed best at making this way of the world seem natural. Jennifer Garner, Louis C.K. Rob Lowe and many others didn't really sell the idea well enough to maintain the humor throughout.

The performances weren't bad overall. I felt for most of the characters which was ultimately most important as the structure of the story relied fully on it. In the beginning, we are introduced to a world where lying doesn't exist. At this point, its okay that everyone has verbal diareah because it gives an exaggerated example of what its like when people tell the full truth all the time. As the story progresses however, I began to realize that the inability to tell a lie doesn't necessary mean one needs to speak their mind at all times. This often could have been solved by simply by prefacing many lies with "I think..." Because something is that one particular character's truth, doesn't mean that it is actually the truth. Understandably, when there is no contrary to truth, its impossible to realize this. Once Mark learns how to lie, he sees the flaws in a society where everyone is completely honest.

When Mark tells a lie to benefit himself, he learns that he can have anything he wants if he takes advantage of it. At his most selfless moment however is when he learns that as much as his ability can benefit others it can spiral out of control... no different really than what telling the truth can cause. This is where the stories structure really works. It highlights very subtly the pros and cons of both telling the truth and telling a lie. Its simple but its accurate. Most importantly, again its subtle. The subtle aspects of this film are the ones that worked best. The subtle jokes.; A home owner asks a burglerer his name so he can report him and the burglerer immediately tells him, the subtle conflicts; Frank (Jonah Hill) decides not to kill himself and now wants to hang out with Mark, and so on. Not to mention, Gervais' ability to be subtly comedic is matched by no one. These subtlties work even more so when you're faced with major conflicts that require even further suspension of disbelief. Without giving too much away, Mark essentially "lies" to the world about the existence of God, or "the Man in the Sky". Regardless of your religious beliefs, for this to work, Gervais, being the atheist that he is, needed to assume that everyone in the history of the the world he has created is too an atheist. In addition, his entire audience needs to forget their specific beliefs and accept the fact that he is telling a lie.

What works here, however, and what keeps this film from becoming extremely sacreligious, is that Mark's "lie" comes from his best intentions. He reads an exaggerated form of the ten commandments to make people happy, just as he did for his mother in his most selfless moment. This is the film's primary suggestion that lying isn't necessarily a bad thing. While this is not the message of the film... this is not really the type of movie out there to send a message... it is an accurate message.

Overall, Lying is an average movie. Given the comedic talent involved, I was disappointed at how rarely I rolled over laughing but the heart of the story was real enough to overcome the fact that the idea behind it all is, while a really smart idea, so far fetched its hard to accept. I think there were things that could have been done to bring the idea down to earth a bit... that would have made it a little bit more relatable, but again... what is was did work. It didn't work great, but it worked well enough to outline a pretty heartfelt story.