I had several gut-busting laugh-out loud moments during the first 30 minutes of "The Invention of Lying" - the basic premise being that our internal decorum governors have been turned off and we humans are incapable, inherently, of speaking anything but the truth.
Mined for comedic material, this premise could have been a vein Gervais worked for at least the first half of the film, but Gervais pulls the throttle back - way back - after it really gets rollicking.
Instead, Gervais creates a story around the premise, a somewhat philosophical tack, both quasi-spiritual and quasi-atheistic, if that is possible. His character, Mark, instead discovers he has the ability to lie and, based on that, Gervais spins a somewhat sad, somewhat enjoyable, but unfortunately not often genuinely funny tale about what that means in the context of a transparent world that is inherently incapable of lying but infinitely capable of being lied to.
Once Mark discovers he can lie to everyone, he uses this to his advantage in a few funny ways, but ultimately it becomes philosophical. He does things like create the idea there is a "Man in a sky," which, much as in real life, one can assign blame for both the good and the bad things that happen to you - thereby relieving everyone of the notion that they have free will, which, of course, frees them to basically do whatever they choose.
The implications here are fairly deep, especially for a movie that one goes into thinking is going to be light-hearted fun. For example: God is an invention, a lie, inherently; there is no free will, it's all predetermined; those incapable of lying are the easiest to lie to; those incapable of lying lie to themselves easiest of all. The list goes on.
If there is a thesis statement here it seems to be that in the freedom to lie and be lied there is contra posed the freedom to see the truth as it is (irony being what it is, after all). I suppose the metaphor is as old as when the serpent lied to Eve: When lied to, she ultimately saw the whole truth.
I don't think I found myself particularly happy with the way the movie played out, even if the beginning was quite funny. Ricky couldn't carry it on the serious side and it seemed the humor was vague and ill-conceived there. It gave the movie a double-minded philosophical weight coupled with the obvious puns and jokes that come with its premise. Overall, it felt pretty drab at the end.
Mined for comedic material, this premise could have been a vein Gervais worked for at least the first half of the film, but Gervais pulls the throttle back - way back - after it really gets rollicking.
Instead, Gervais creates a story around the premise, a somewhat philosophical tack, both quasi-spiritual and quasi-atheistic, if that is possible. His character, Mark, instead discovers he has the ability to lie and, based on that, Gervais spins a somewhat sad, somewhat enjoyable, but unfortunately not often genuinely funny tale about what that means in the context of a transparent world that is inherently incapable of lying but infinitely capable of being lied to.
Once Mark discovers he can lie to everyone, he uses this to his advantage in a few funny ways, but ultimately it becomes philosophical. He does things like create the idea there is a "Man in a sky," which, much as in real life, one can assign blame for both the good and the bad things that happen to you - thereby relieving everyone of the notion that they have free will, which, of course, frees them to basically do whatever they choose.
The implications here are fairly deep, especially for a movie that one goes into thinking is going to be light-hearted fun. For example: God is an invention, a lie, inherently; there is no free will, it's all predetermined; those incapable of lying are the easiest to lie to; those incapable of lying lie to themselves easiest of all. The list goes on.
If there is a thesis statement here it seems to be that in the freedom to lie and be lied there is contra posed the freedom to see the truth as it is (irony being what it is, after all). I suppose the metaphor is as old as when the serpent lied to Eve: When lied to, she ultimately saw the whole truth.
I don't think I found myself particularly happy with the way the movie played out, even if the beginning was quite funny. Ricky couldn't carry it on the serious side and it seemed the humor was vague and ill-conceived there. It gave the movie a double-minded philosophical weight coupled with the obvious puns and jokes that come with its premise. Overall, it felt pretty drab at the end.