Susan Granger’s review of “The Invention of Lying” (Warner Bros.)
If you think this is a romantic comedy, forget it. It’s a rambling discourse set in an alternate reality in which everyone tells the truth. Hearing people converse when there’s no deceit, no flattery and no fiction is a very, very funny premise – for about 20 minutes.
So when chubby, down-on-his-luck Mark Bellison (Ricky Gervais) arrives early to pick up his beautiful blind date, Anna (Jennifer Garner), she greets him with, “Hi, I was just masturbating….mind waiting a few minutes?” During dinner, she guilelessly tells her mother on the phone that Mark’s not very attractive and there’s no chanced she’ll sleep with him. Embarrassment may not have been invented yet, but humiliation is inevitable, particularly when Mark’s boss (Jeffrey Tambor) fires him as a historical screenwriter at fact-based Lecture Films, much to the satisfaction of his secretary, Shelley (Tina Fey), and fellow scribe, Brad Kessler (Rob Lowe) – and he faces eviction..
But Mark’s life changes abruptly when he visits his dying mother in an institutional home calling itself “A Sad Place for Hopeless Old People.” Grasping at anything to give his mother some hope, he assures here that there is an afterlife, a “Man in the Sky” and that she will have “an eternity of joy.” Word spreads quickly – as does his fame and fortune – and soon Mark must explain exactly what he meant. To that end, he decides to write down 10 rules for living, using Pizza Hut boxes as ‘tablets.’ Of course, Mark’s celebrity puts him in a different light insofar as Anna’s concerned. While she’d really like to make beautiful babies with someone as handsome as Brad Kessler, she finds something indefinable yet appealing about Mark.
Written and directed by Gervais and first-timer Matthew Robinson, it’s based on a satirical concept that grows tiresome. On the other hand, they did rope in friends like Philip Seymour Hoffman, Edward Norton, Christopher Guest and Jason Bateman for cameos. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Invention of Lying” is a poignant 6 – a showcase for Ricky Gervais.
