Movie Review: The Invention of Lying (2009)

Ricky Gervais is one of my favorite comedians.  The British version of The Office was extremely funny, Extras is perhaps the funniest British show I’ve ever watched, and Ghost Town was kept afloat by Gervais’ comic timing and dry wit.  Needless to say, I had high expectations for the new comedy starring and written by Gervais, The Invention of Lying.

The Invention of Lying tells a somewhat simple but ingenious story:  In a world where no one lies, Mark Bellison (Gervais) discovers the ability to lie.  Bellison, considered a loser by almost everyone, including himself, finds that the ability to speak “that which is not” can come in handy, both professionally and personally.

Unfortunately, The Invention of Lying takes a premise with nearly endless possibilities and manages to partially squander its potential.  That isn’t to say it isn’t good.  It is good, but it’s just not great.  Hilarious situations are introduced and then either go nowhere or disappear from the screen.  Hilarious cameos from Philip Seymour Hoffman and Edward Norton make one wish that their scenes had been twice as long as they were.

On the flip side, Tina Fey and Jonah Hill make brief appearances that do almost nothing to the plot, and their scenes either needed to be extended or cut from the film completely.  As is, they barely work.  Rob Lowe and Jennifer Garner both perform adequately in supporting roles, although neither of them takes full advantage of the material provided.

Ricky Gervais, however, is at his comic best.  He has always had great timing and a natural inclination of how to sell jokes, and in The Invention of Lying he has to do his fair share of selling jokes.  Unlike in Ghost Town, which was written by someone else, Gervais appears more comfortable when performing in something that he had a hand in writing.

The crux of whether you like or dislike this movie, however, is probably going to come down to one particular plotline.  Ricky Gervais has not been shy about approaching contentious subjects in the past.  In The Invention of Lying, this subject happens to be religion, which in America is a subject possibly more contentious than any other.  Although I don’t want to give away any of the jokes, I will say that The Invention of Lying falls of the side of the coin that says that religion is a man-made phenomenon.

I personally found the entire sequence to be the funniest part of the movie, but I can see how some people could be offended by the way The Invention of Lying tackles the ideas of both religion itself and religious faith.  The ad campaign for the movie completely ignored this aspect of the movie and its plot, and I have seen a few very negative reactions to The Invention of Lying solely resting on the religion sub-plot.

I personally wonder why the movie ends when it does.  It sets up Gervais’ sacrilegious argument, runs with it for a few minutes, and then the movie veers off and never goes any further than a couple of comments near the end of the movie that are pretty tame compared to what happens in the middle.  The extent to which it’s in The Invention of Lying is enough to offend those who will be offended by material of this ilk, and thus it seems somewhat odd that Gervais didn’t go any further with the material than he did.

The Invention of Lying is funny and, at times, flirts with greatness, but never is able to put the whole package together.  Maybe Ricky Gervais wasn’t quite sure how to make a movie for American audiences.  Maybe Gervais has softened his comedy to achieve a larger audience (although this seems unlikely given the religion aspect of the movie).  It is a small step up from Ghost Town, but not much of one.

Rating:  7/10