The Pitch: Is Ricky Gervais a bankable star? He's got two strikes (Extras,
Ghost Town). Let's go for a third.
Of all the movies that I go out of my way to see a second time, The Invention of Lying has to be the least well regarded. I've seen plenty of movies twice. I even saw Dorm Daze a second time. That was out of opportunity though. I made sure to give the Godfather movies another viewing simply because I appreciate movies more than I did a decade ago. I'll probably even give Network (which I really despised) another chance because it's so well regarded. It even makes sense to revisit something like Aliens, which I honestly didn't remember if I'd seen before. I saw The Invention of Lying in theaters. I have the ticket stub. By no means did I hate it, but it was a thoroughly forgettable movie. About two years ago, in the middle of a particularly deep internet rabbit hole, I stumbled on a glowing review of The Invention of Lying. For some reason, that mixed with a few other elements to make me really curious to see it again.
Look, I've been an atheist virtually my entire life. I still remember getting my First Eucharist is 2nd grade and being dumbfounded when I realized that fellow students weren't joking when they talked about thunder meaning that God is angry. I'm simply not wired for belief in god. I don't hold it against people who do (as long as they aren't hurting anyone, what do I care?). It's just different wiring. So, I like a good atheist rant as much as the next guy. Ricky Gervais (and Bill Maher) do get insufferable about it sometimes. They treat atheism like a ministry, and that gets exhausting.
I bring this up because The Invention of Lying is a religious movie. At least, it is in the way Life of Brian is. It's not subtle. Mark (Gervais) delivers his message on pizza boxes that look like the 10 Commandment tablets. He even ends up looking like Jesus at one point. If anyone comes away from this confused about what Gervais is trying to say, they aren't very observant.
I dig this kind of high concept movie. My favorite movie of all time is Stranger Than Fiction, after all. Gervais and his co-writer/director Matthew Robinson think all this through an impressive amount. They deliver a close approximation to what a world without lying would look like. This movie is undeniably clever. For an idea that has "10 minute comedy sketch" written all over it, they do an admirable job finding new slants on the idea throughout to keep it going. The smartest thing the movie does is when it has Mark accidentally creates religion out of an act of love as his mother is dying. It's a surprisingly well-acted scene and it makes perfect sense in the moment.
The cast in this movie is kind of insane. Nothing in Jennifer Garner's career would make me expect her to be in something like this. Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Ed Norton essentially have extended cameos. When you think about his public fallout last year, it's jarring to see Louis C.K. in a role that has him talking about wanting to touch women's boobs. It's also jarring to hear Tina Fey use the other F-word with such verve. I get that she's playing someone who is supposed to be an awful person, but still. It's like seeing Dimaggio is a Red Sox jersey.
There is something that feels cheap about the movie. Somehow, everything looks fake. Better yet, everything looks like it was made by an art department for a movie. This isn't a lived-in world. The movie has an issue similar to one most dystopias have: I can see how the world exists this way during the movie but not before or after. I can't fathom how to got to where it is or how it lasts after the movie. Gervais gets that too. The voice-over at the beginning is there entirely to say, "just go with me here". This movie is a rhetorical argument. It's a guy throwing out a hypothetical to make a point. Ultimately, the point and the comedy aren't quite enough to justify the conceit.
Here's a great example of why my One Big Leap is valuable. OK. This is a world without lying before Mark. Given that, how does the rest of the movie work? Well, the story is a pretty generic RomCom with leads who have no spark. It's more clever than funny. The production design is cheap. The performances are committed but not always great. It's an agenda movie that's afraid to move beyond its intended point. The whole "only pretty people should want to marry each other" argument of Garner's character strikes me as more of a logical thought than an honest one. The movie tends to confuse those two things. I actually liked this movie a lot more than I remembered. I could see how if the movie was even 5% different in the right ways, I could adore it. As it is, it feels more like a writing exercise than a fully formed movie.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
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