The Invention of Lying

Editorial

We're not going to lie to you: The Invention Of Lying is bad. The Love Guru bad. Sgt. Bilko bad. David Brent's stand-up bad. It's so bad that it makes you think that Stephen Merchant — notable by his near-absence here, with first-timer Matthew Robinson sharing the writing/directing duties with Ricky Gervais — was the real brains of his partnership with Gervais all along.

That the movie exists in a laugh-free limbo at all is a huge surprise, not just because of Gervais' involvement, but because of the seemingly fail-safe premise. On paper, a reverse Liar Liar sounds promising, but in practice it's not only massively flawed with contradictions galore, but soon runs out of steam, like an improv-class exercise stretched way beyond its limits.

One major problem is that we're not simply in a world where people can't lie, but where they're compelled to tell the truth, in the bluntest possible terms, regardless of the situation. While this is fine for a waiter admitting to sipping a drink, it leads to a succession of flat sketches, comedic dead zones filled with first-base insults.

Gervais has, of course, traded in the comedy of embarrassment before, but in The Office or Extras, he's always had sympathetic characters to bounce off. The Invention Of Lying is peopled almost entirely by spiteful half-wits and antagonistic morons — Jennifer Garner's love interest, for example, is a shallow narcissist who won't shut up about genetics in a manner that would please Dr. Josef Mengele — and the result is a charmless affair.

By the time the ramshackle plot detours into a hideously ill-conceived religious satire, as a Jesus-sandalled Gervais invents God, not even the regular interventions of his Amazing Comedy Friends (including Jason Bateman, Norton and, mugging shamelessly in a one-scene cameo, Merchant) can save this film.

Chris Hewitt