DVD Review: THE INVENTION OF LYING

I saw this movie a couple weeks ago, but I'm just writing about it now, the reason being my conflicted feelings about it. On the one hand, I could watch Ricky Gervais all day, and I think the religious satire is sharp and spot-on (although allegedly not as sharp as in the original script). On the other hand, I found the shoehorning of a romantic comedy plot rather desperate, and I didn't think any of the movie's many ideas came to fruition.

But of all my problems with the film, here's the one that was the most responsible for my ultimate thumbs down: the premise fundamentally does not work.

In case you're unfamiliar with the story, the premise is thus: there is an alternate world where nobody ever lies, and Ricky Gervais tells the first lie in this world, setting off a chain of events that don't really, actually go anywhere or change much of anything (but that's a complaint for maybe later in this review). For the first act of the movie, you witness overly-honest people call Ricky Gervais fat and pugnosed, tell him stories about how they want to kill themselves, share their disdain or in some ways outright hatred for him, and generally treat him like complete dogshit.

Here's my problem: just because nobody can lie, it doesn't mean that tact doesn't exist. In fact, in such a world as we see in this movie, tact would be even more crucially important than it is in our own world. With no tact, with this bizarre compulsive need to overshare that is possessed by everbody in this film's universe, there would be wars raging constantly; murders in the street; constant brawls. Society would not be able to function in any recognizable way. But still, this movie shows us people being outright dicks to each other on a regular basis, and there are never any repercussions. Beyond that, how would it be possible to be a little bit different from everybody else in this world? Closeted homosexual? Not any more. Like to wear frilly panties? Now everybody knows. Are you a pervert? Bad news for you, because whenever you meet a woman, you're going to blurt, apropos of nothing, "I'd like to chain you to the toilet and sodomize you all night long." Just because you're being honest, it doesn't mean you have to reveal everything going on in your mind.

Now, the one thing this movie gets right is that everybody in this universe seems completely miserable, all the time. Unfortunately, Gervais's discovery of lying doesn't start a revolution that makes everybody's lives better. It does at first, as he learns to tell people what they want to hear, but soon he accidentally starts religion, and people go back to being miserable again. Nobody else learns to lie, which I think is what a smarter movie would have done. What's the point of "inventing" something if nobody else catches on?

At the end of the film, nothing has changed. Gervais has won the girl, but the world is virtually the same as when we came in. This terrible, terrible world, that they continue living in, and which will continue to treat them like shit. A glimmer of hope is that Gervais's son is shown to possess the skill to lie, but that's just a bullshit cheat out of actually having to craft a resolution to all of the issues this film raises.

Apart from that, the movie also contains too many cameos and about three too many montages.

Conclusion: an ill-thought-out premise provides a few laughs, but they are hampered by a needless romantic comedy plot and by the movie's own unwillingness to carry its themes through to conclusion.