It was with tremendous disappointment that I persevered through 45 minutes of Ricky Gervais’s latest venture, ‘The Invention of Lying’. Make no mistake this is a movie that is barely watchable.How did the comic genius go so awry on this shift? Imagine yourself as a film executive being pitched the idea. Ricky plays a man who becomes the first person ever in the world, to lie. A multitude of ‘zany’ possibilities right? Er, yeah. But does this translate to good cinema? Clearly no guarantee and based on this effort, Gervais should in future pass such scripts to the go-to man for such movies, Jim Carrey.
Firstly the mood and tone is hopelessly muddled. The setting is grimly sterile in an understated, futuristic sci-fi kind of way, but without the hovering vehicles. However at no point am I drawn in, even on a superficial level, to this strange world. The mid-Atlantic atmosphere created with the Anglo-American cast stretches the concept from the ridiculous to just plain vacuous. I am tired of every Gervais character being teased about either his a) pug nose, b) rotund physique, or c) various other physical abnormalities. Let’s move on Ricky.
At no time do I feel anything for the characters except pity for having to deliver such unfunny lines. What seals the disappointment deal is that even as I write, the full wash of mediocrity having fully subsided, I remain convinced that they had the makings of a very good film. But this makes the films flaws all the more inexcusable.
Let’s hope Gervais gets back on track after this disappointment.
and he took a pasting at the Golden Globes as well....
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