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As writer/director/star, Ricky Gervais aims high with his second lead role in Hollywood. Following the marginally interesting Ghost Town, he takes aim at a number of sacred cows including the role of truth in society and church. To this he wilfully attaches the all too familiar routines that have come to define his self-deprecating schtick: results are mixed at best.
In a world that doesn't have a word for truth because there is no concept of a lie, Mark Belison (Gervais) is on the out. About to loose his job as screenwriter at Lecture Films (documentaries are the only game in town and he's been unsuccessfully saddled with the Black Plague), he's also failing to woo the girl of his dreams (Jennifer Garner). Forced to absorb and inexplicable stream of consciousness of those around him, Mark hears much about himself he'd sooner not – notably that she finds him interesting yet fat and snub nosed. Then a brain spasm enables him to tell his first of many lies and Mark is parachuted into the fast lane.
Any film that starts with a vagina joke is in trouble. That's just the way it is. And so it is with The Invention of Lying which, despite its rich platform of ideas, fails to ignite in every way possible. Gervais does what Gervais does, and has done since the first episode of The Office. And so it goes on. By the end of Act 1, The Invention of Lying is propping itself up on the dreary staples of sentimentality and schtick which save neither him nor a film that remains resolutely unfunny. Echoing The Life of Brian simply cheapens a scene in which newly Evangelical Mark presents his sermon on pizza boxes, one already cheapened by blatant product placement. And so it goes on. And on.
// COLIN FRASER
moviereview colin fraser film movie australia review critic flicks