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The Invention of Lying
In an alternate reality, lying -- even the concept of a lie -- does not even exist. Everyone -- from politicians to advertisers to the man and woman on the street -- speaks the truth and nothing but the truth with no thought of the consequences. But when a down-on-his-luck loser named Mark suddenly develops the ability to lie, he finds that dishonesty has its rewards. In a world where every word is assumed to be the absolute truth, Mark easily lies his way to fame and fortune. But lies have a way of spreading, and Mark begins to realize that things are getting a little out of control when some of his tallest tales are being taken as, well, gospel. With the entire world now hanging on his every word, there is only one thing Mark has not been able to lie his way into: the heart of the woman he loves.
Genres: Comedy
Running Time: 1 hr. 40 min.
Release Date: October 2nd, 2009 (wide)
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for language including some sexual material and a drug reference.
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures Distribution
| Starring: |
Ricky Gervais, Jennifer Garner, Jonah Hill, Louis C.K., Jeffrey Tambor |
| Directed by: |
Ricky Gervais, Matthew Robinson |
| Produced by: |
Terry Dougas, Ted Field, Sue Baden-Powell | |
 How dreary realism is! Oscar Wilde more or less wrote that once upon a time, and now Ricky Gervais has more or less hit upon that same conclusion. With “The Invention of Lying,” a mostly funny if melancholic defense of deceit, Mr. Gervais has come up with the makings of a classic. Alas, making is not doing. And while the movie is a conceptual pip filled with quotable laughs and gentle pokes at religious faith at its most literal, it also looks so shoddy that you yearn for the camerawork, lighting and polish of his shows, like the original “The Office,” because, really, these days TV rarely looks this bad.
Hey, I’m just being honest, in keeping with the movie’s comic premise. Mr. Gervais stars as Mark Bellison, a sad sack and screenwriter who lives in a world that looks a lot like our own, only sleepier, less shiny and with no visible security cameras. The defining characteristic of this somewhat bland storybook land, with its calm streets and token homeless man, is that no one ever tells an untruth, not lovers or friends, bosses or assistants, moviemakers or advertisers. While that makes for some awkward moments, it also makes for some initially fine comedy. The tagline for Coke here is simple, elegant, true: “It’s very famous.” While an ad for Pepsi just concedes the obvious: “When they don’t have Coke.”
For a frump like Mark, whose rounded, sagging shoulders suggest that he’s never recovered from his schoolyard torments, honesty breeds contempt but mostly humiliation. When he goes on a first date with a beauty, Anna (Jennifer Garner), she opens the door and announces, “I was just masturbating.” To which he replies, “That makes me think of your vagina.” This, in turn, makes her run upstairs and finish what she started. And so it embarrassingly, amusingly goes, as the mismatched couple, both honest to an excruciating and painful fault, dine at a restaurant where the hostess blurts out that she’s threatened by Anna, and a waiter begins service with the matter-of-fact announcement that Anna is out of Mark’s league.
 Anna is so out of his league that she’s in another game entirely, but because the moviemakers want to have their fun and their Hollywood ending both, much of the story involves getting these two together. That’s generically diverting, but the better, smarter, more ticklish stuff in the movie involves the simple truth that a world without lying is also one without art. Over at Lecture Films, where Mark struggles as a writer, the movies are based only on true events, like the black plague. Narrated by stuffed shirts (Christopher Guest in whiskers) seated in armchairs and pompously droning into the camera, this is cinema without fictional embellishment, heaving bosoms, rustling crinolines, passion, pleasure or intrigue, kind of like “Masterpiece Theater” without Evelyn Waugh or the Brontës.
Or Oscar Wilde, for whom lying (“the telling of beautiful untrue things”) was “the proper aim of art.” That’s an intoxicating, rich idea that Mr. Gervais, who wrote and directed the movie with an American newcomer, Matthew Robinson, exploits minimally. (This is the first movie directing gig for both men.) That’s too bad, because some of the sweetest moments are of Mark lying or rather exercising his imagination, as when he tenderly tells a dying woman that there’s more than the void on the other side. Or when he summarizes the first fictional script, which features ninjas and aliens and sounds like something Roger Corman cooked up in the 1950s. In these scenes, lying becomes a means to transcendence, an escape from the quotidian, from our oppressive literal-mindedness, from our brute selves.
For the most part, though, Mr. Gervais prefers to shock us with our own brutality. Some of these jolts are delivered through dialogue exchanged by performers — among the appealing guest stars are Jason Bateman, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jeffrey Tambor — blurting the awful truth while stranded inside the inert, ugly setups. At other times the bad news arrives on a sign, like that on a nursing home that reads “A Sad Place for Hopeless Old People.” You wince, you laugh, you wince again. At some point, though, these unvarnished truths begin to feel heavy, cruel. The truth doesn’t just hurt — sometimes it’s also degrading, and not just for the characters. The movie encourages our inner bully, coaxing it out for giggles.
 That’s the idea, I suppose: the filmmakers want the audience to feel the sting of these blunt verdicts, largely it seems so that Mr. Gervais can later tut-tut us about how mean and wrong we’ve been. In “Extras,” his hilarious television series about life on the show business margins, Mr. Gervais played a professional narcissist (an actor) who, after a long slog, hits the B-ish list only to then wag his finger at everyone (us included) for being so obsessed with fame. He’s following a similar strategy here by playing the nominal loser turned triumphant conscience, and while that’s fine as far it goes, the movie itself would have gone further if he and Mr. Robinson had worked harder on their own sweet lies — their art.
“The Invention of Lying” is rated PG-13. (Parents strongly cautioned.) Sexual innuendo, booze, insults.
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