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Review: The Invention of Lying

By Kirsty Leckie-Palmer
Monday 19th October 2009
Ricky Gervais’s directorial debut speculates on a world free from falsehood, as his protagonist, screenwriter Mark Bellington, must come to terms with his personal inadequacy whilst persistently reminded of the pedestrian nature of his existence by those that surround him. After struggling through a day of blunt insults and put-downs, having lost his job and facing eviction, he is driven to telling the world’s first lie. As a comment on the superficiality we are faced with on a day-to-day basis, from ad-campaigns to emotional masquerade, the writing is keenly observant and well thought out. A promising concept so far, reassured by the formidable comedic ensemble of Tina Fey, Jonah Hill and Jason Bateman, and gratuitous cameos from Edward Norton and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. The star power and punchy one-liners keep things entertaining by deflecting attention from a really quite bland protagonist for as long as such tactics can. Everyman is one thing, and disillusionment is fine, but Gervais could have taken more care to flesh out the likeability factor of his character, Mark, especially when compared with such similar high-concept comedy turns as Jim Carrey’s in Liar Liar or Bill Murray’s in Groundhog Day. Whimpering unconvincingly through his mother’s death, Gervais is not only well out of the depths of his acting ability, but fails decidedly to spark any idiosyncratic point of identity. This is where things swiftly start to lose direction. As Mark promises an afterlife to his mother, and being taken, of course, to have told the truth by some naïve witnesses, he must turn prophet-figure to the masses, and flimsily lie his way to a bizarre and insensitive parody of Christianity. The conventional narrative path then becomes obstructed by desperate attempts to answer the ethical questions raised, and concludes with convention winning out – a wedding scene, a hasty moral message less sophisticated than the average Disney exemplar and a hurried tying together of loose ends achieved chiefly by ignoring the high-aiming middle segment of the film. Conclusion: The Invention of Lying is imaginative enough to sustain a world without lies comfortably enough for its populist audience in the first half, but ultimately flounders as it mounts beyond its reach for an under-contemplated and unclear intellectual purpose.  


 Rating: Two Stars