While I think I might have to shoot him if forced to spend much time with him, Ricky Gervais is a smart bloke, filled with bright ideas and clever ways of looking at the world. Anyone who’s seen any of his stand-up will know that they’re almost semi-philosophical lectures with jokes thrown in. The Invention Of Lying, which he wrote and co-directed with Matthew Robinson, allows him to play with a lot of the sort of big ideas he’s obviously interested in, in a comedy that’s ridiculously high-concept.
The film is set in a world where no one has ever learned how to lie. In fact it’s not so much never lying, but having a compulsion to always tell the unvarnished truth, with no self-censorship at all, so that, for example, when Gervais’ Mark Bellison goes on a date with Jennifer Garner’s Anna, it’s the most natural thing in the world for her to start talking about his bad genes and how they could never have children because of his pudgy figure and snub nose. Fed up with his crappy lot in life, Mark stumbles on the greatest discovery in history – he learns to say things that aren’t the truth.
As nobody has ever done this before, Mark soon discovers that no matter how big the lie or how ridiculous, everybody believes it, because they have no reason not to. This leads to all sorts of comic situations, and even sees Mark inadvertently creating religion when he invents heaven to comfort his dying mother.
In most hands, The Invention Of Lying would have seemed like a single joke strung out way too long, but Gervais and Robinson manage to keep the conceit going with endless neat little ideas and gags. Unfortunately though, things sag in the final 20 minutes, when it dissolves into a standard, treacly, will-the-boy-get-the-girl rom com, which seems to have fallen out of a less ambitious and far less interesting movies.
This is not to say that the first 80 minutes are without flaws, as the jokes are occasionally patchy and without the utterly brilliant section where Marks invents religion, the whole thing might have seemed a lot less interesting, but from an old folks home that describes itself as ‘A Sad Place for Hopeless Old People’, to a Pepsi ad with the tagline ‘When they don’t have Coke’ (it’s a miracle they were allowed to do that), the way it plays with what compulsive truth telling would be like is a lot of fun. There are a fair few problems with the premise, as it’s difficult to imagine that a world where everyone’s so blunt about the truth could work in the way the film suggests it does, but as long as you can overlook this and see it more as an allegory than an alternate reality, it works pretty well.
The film also has a decent array of star cameos, ranging from Gervais’ old cohorts Stephen Merchant and Shaun Williamson (AKA Barry from Eastenders) to Edward Norton and Jason Bateman, while female lead Jennifer Garner once again shows that she’s a pretty good comedienne.
The Invention Of Lying may not be quite as funny of clever as it thinks it is, and the end may be rather generic, but it’s still got plenty of humorous moments, oodles of interesting ideas and the 15-minute section about the creation of religion and the meaning of spirituality borders on brilliance. This a comedy that wants you to think, and it certainly sends your brain off in some interesting directions.
Overall Verdict: An interesting but flawed comedy that shows Gervais should have a decent career on the big screen.
Reviewer: Phil Caine
