courtesy of http://the-invention-of-lying.warnerbros.com/
I picked up this movie thinking it would be hilarious. I love Ricky Gervais and I think he is hysterical I was hoping he could overpower the mundane Jennifer Garner. Sadly, he could not.
The movie starts out that Gervais as Mark Bellison is living in a Utopia like world where people cannot lie. Everyone must speak the truth and even whatever is on their mind at the time. For example the opening scene is Mark going to meet Jennifer Garner or Anna for a date, when she opens the door she tells him that she is pessimistic about the date and is going to finish masturbating well he sits and waits downstairs because there is no way she is going to sleep with him. Really? Starting with the gratuitous smut already?
Well as you can figure out the date went badly as she had to tell him throughout it.
Mark works for a television company as a writer but because they live in a world with no lies all television is fact no fictional dramas, or even sets. Well he is about to be fired and everyone knows because his boss has to tell them.
After many other unfortunate events he discovers that he and he alone has the ability to lie. He goes to a bank where they ask him what his balance in his account is and gives him what he asks for! Then it's funny for maybe....15 minutes.
Until he has to 'lie' to someone close to him who is dying and in order to cheer them up he tells them that when you die you go to a wonderful place where you are young and have your own mansion. Then he must explain to everyone that overheard as to how he knows these things. Mark tells them that there is a 'man in the sky' who controls everything and decides who can and can not go to the place.
He then uses this to try and impress and maintain a relationship with Anna who is dumber than dirt and just a pretty face ( if you can even call it that). She in turn still doesn't like him because he's fat and unattractive.
So there you go even if you lie to a girl, tell lies about God and cheat your way into lots of money you are still a loser because you are fat. Wow great moral.
Overall the movie is bland, predictable and really not worth the effort.
Boo!
Thanks for saving me the trouble. The no lying concept sounds like something that somebody creative could have done something with, but it must have failed to materialize in this. It's kind of interesting that the opposite seemed to work well in The Truman Show, where the whole idea was that everybody in the world was lying to one person.
Thanks for this.
Ki