A celebration of dishonesty! ‘The Invention of Lying’ Review

Posted on November 9, 2009 - 9:05pm by michael The Invention of Lying takes place not only in a world where “the human race has never evolved the ability to lie,” but also in a world where, like Austin Powers because of the unfreezing process, they also have no inner monologue. This is, in fact, one of the only ways that the movie goes wrong. It begins by introducing us to some of the people that live in this world, people who make statements like “aww, your baby is so ugly,” and “wow, I just took one of the biggest poops of my whole life. What’s for dinner?” Ha ha. Jim Carrey couldn’t lie in Liar Liar. In The Invention of Lying, the writers don’t seem to know the difference between telling a lie and your inner thoughts blurting forth from your mouth like an avalanche of too much information. Consequently, the comedy in the first 15 or 20 minutes or so of the movie is as flat and unamusing as any I can remember seeing. However, once it tightens up into the story of a man who discovers the power of dishonesty, it turns into  not only a clever social comedy, but also contains a heartwarming love-story. You remember Ricky Gervais as the British dentist in the disappointing Ghost Town who developed a sudden ability to see and communicate with dead people, who unfortunately irritated the hell out of him. This time around, in a story that he co-wrote and co-directed with first time writer/director Matthew Robinson, Gervais plays Mark Bellison, a regular guy in an irregular world. He once again plays himself, an over-weight British guy with little success in the romance department, only now living in a world where the real thoughts of those around him come right out. But it’s always been that way, so he doesn’t even know to be offended when he takes the curiously named Anna McDoogles (Jennifer Garner) out on a date and she informs him upon opening her front door that he’s not attractive and there’s not the slightest chance that they’ll be sleeping together in the future. [caption id="attachment_63613" align="alignleft" width="397" caption="Anna politely describes to Mark how inconsistent their genetic codes are."][/caption] As we are reminded what seems like every four or five minutes, Mark is a loser. He has a loser job as an unsuccessful screen-writer, which is to be expected in a world where fiction is impossible. Action thrillers come in the form of historically accurate epics, presented by some guy in a smoking jacket reading to the camera from a history book. Exciting! After his latest bomb, he finds himself fired and about to get evicted, until he goes to the bank to close his account and get the last of his money out. At the bank, a teller informs him that the bank’s computers are down, and she asks him how much money he had in his account. He has $300 but needs $800 for his rent, and we get to see the lightning bolts going off in his brain as he, in a storm of confusion, utters the number 800 where the real truth is 300. But this is the best part - suddenly the computers come back on, the teller sees $300 in his account, but that can’t be right. People don’t lie, computers do. She apologizes for the bank’s computers and hands him his $800. [caption id="attachment_63614" align="alignright" width="394" caption="In a world without lies, dating is much more efficient. But not for these guys."][/caption] So Mark has just told the world’s first lie and instantly become not only the most powerful man on the planet, but also the world’s first prophet. And here, of course, is why you may have heard so much strenuous complaining from the religious sector. In order to see his mother smile one last time, he tells her on her deathbed that life doesn’t just stop when she dies, but she goes to the happiest place she can imagine, and everyone she ever loved would be there. The nurses and doctor (Jason Bateman) overhear and want to know more about this place, and soon Mark finds himself on national television telling the world about the Man In The Sky. This is a great scene, although not hard to see why it made so many people so mad. Mark doesn’t sweat the details when explaining that the “man in the sky” is responsible for everything that ever happens in the world, good or bad, as he struggles to get through the ten commandments that he’s written, for their convenience, on a couple of Pizza Hut boxes. Like any politician, he stands before them and makes a whole list of promises that he can’t keep, which made me much more interested to learn about the government in this world than their lack of religion. Those of you angered by this scene, keep in mind that Mark isn’t ridiculing Christianity, he’s just trying to give the people what they want. [caption id="attachment_63615" align="alignleft" width="379" caption="The doctor politely explains to Mark about his mother's imminent death and today's special in the hospital cafeteria."][/caption] Later, at his mother’s grave, when he says that he’s the only person in the world that knows that she’s really lying there in the ground and not in “the happy place,” it’s not because he doesn’t believe in Heaven, it’s because he knows nothing about it. Remember, when he told everyone about the man in the sky and the happy place, as far as he knew he was simply exercising his newfound ability to lie. Nevertheless, such logic will fall on deaf ears. The movie was, after all, written by a couple guys who most certainly do not live in a world without lies, which is why so many people have indicted the movie as a shallow atheist rant. But what I liked about the movie is that they take a clever concept and don’t entirely screw it up, which I’ve seen so many times in the past. They definitely didn’t get it quite right, but it’s an interesting comedy that makes some clever comments on human behavior and even manages to fit a cute romance into it all, and also gets us to think a little differently about the world around us. [caption id="attachment_63616" align="alignright" width="399" caption="Yeah, if I was the only man in the world who could understand what a lie was, Vegas would definitely be pretty high on my list of priorities..."][/caption] In one scene in a bar, Mark asks a couple of his friends, “If you could make the world what you wanted it to be, what would you do?” True to form, Louis C.K. thinks for a second, and says, “I’d touch boobs.” The bartender, none other than Philip Seymour Hoffman, agrees. Personally, I would never take advantage of the opposite sex in such a way (see? In my world, lying is perfectly ok!), but what would you do if you had such a power? I really appreciate movies that make you think like that, especially when they show you someone who has that power and doesn’t do something totally pointless and stupid with it (like Kevin Bacon did in Hollow Man. Remember that thing?). So far I haven’t read about anyone having caught on to this, but the whole movie is based on the theme of Part IV of Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels,” where Gulliver takes “A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms” (pronounced “hwin-ims”). Houyhnhnms are talking horses who also haven’t developed the ability to lie, and one of Jennifer Garner’s lines late in the movie, “How did you say something that wasn’t?” is taken almost verbatim from the book, where we learn that the Houyhnhnms simply can’t understand how someone could utter something that wasn’t so. The Invention of Lying has most certainly made plenty of people unhappy, but in the right frame of mind it’s a clever romantic comedy. At the very least, it’s gotten people talking, and that’s always a good thing. Also keep your eye out for a whole slew of celebrity cameos, my favorite of which is Edward Norton as the police officer! The Bean Meter