Climbing Higher Pictures

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The Invention of Lying Review

by Ryan Hamelin

Movie Grade: B-

Poor Ricky Gervais. I honestly feel bad for the guy, simply on the basis that he hasn’t yet managed to translate his humor to American audiences. The US remake of his classic British sitcom, The Office, has grown far and beyond its source material and has taken on a demographic life of its own in the world of prime-time comedy. Gervais’s TV show Extras had a limited, though loved life on the premium channel circuit before ending rather unceremoniously in 2007. Now we have his first bid at Hollywood, a film written, directed, and starring him, with an almost unbelievably strong supporting cast to help the audience swallow its incredibly high-minded original concept. It shoots for the stars, and ends up wallowing in orbit. It’s not that the story is bad, per say, it just never lives up to the premise.

Don’t get me wrong, you will laugh. It’s not so aloof of a script that it refuses to stoop to your level of base comedy conventions. In fact, many of the funniest moments occur when it sells out, when it grounds the humor in everyday monotonies, even when the world that has been created here is strikingly distinct from our own. No one lies, everyone speaks absolute truth (or their opinion of the absolute truth, there is a difference), and they feel compelled to do so on a regular basis. Because of this compulsion, there is a sense of naïveté and frankness that makes the audience cringe and squirm. As funny as it all is, we are forced to consider the awkwardness of our own lives, and whether or not we’d still have friends or a job if we always spoke our minds.

Luckily, Gervais is smart enough to know that he can’t let the film get bogged down in this introductory period. The revelation of the world’s first lie comes just as the audience begins to feel honesty fatigue, and at that point it never looks back. Though the fact that I am writing this next sentence will undoubtedly turn away most of middle America, I would be remiss as a reviewer if I didn’t discuss the thematic change of the second and third act of the film. This is a world without religion, without faith, and without a concept of an afterlife, so therefore, a man who has the ability to lie and deceive will inevitably find himself creating the concept of religion. Yes he goes there, yes it is incredibly humorous, but it is also the sort of story choice that will alienate anyone in the audience who doesn’t consider what he’s saying with an open mind.

Becoming a version of Jesus Christ, only without all the killing in his name, makes Gervais more than the average male lead in a romantic comedy, and unfortunately for the film, that’s still the genre it is aiming to please. You realize that instead of being about the nature of truth, Gervais is really trying to talk about the nature of what our lives mean and whether doing what we want to do is the only way we can be truly happy. If it sounds deep and intense for this kind of comedy, that’s because it is, but the film doesn’t go deep enough in to be satisfying because the creator is trying to keep the tone light and ever so slightly British.

It is clear that this is a man who has something to say. For whatever reason, he attempted to mold his thoughts into a cookie cutter Hollywood movie. As far as I can see, the only way Gervais will achieve success in America is if he embraces his own tonal merits as a writer and an actor. A change of editor would also do him wonders, as the repetitive fade to blacks and generally choppy cutting leaves the various arcs and character development unintentionally flat. When a movie tries this hard, you have to give it credit for its ambition. Unfortunately for The Invention of Lying, the truth is a jumbled but entertaining film that does everything it thinks you want and fails at being true to itself.