MARKETED as a romantic comedy, “The Invention of Lying” turns out to be a dour, shouty atheist manifesto. With a change of scenery it could have been called “Godless in Seattle.”
Star, co-writer and co-director Ricky Gervais seems to have come across one of those high-concept Hollywood comedy scripts — a bit “Liar, Liar,” a bit “Groundhog Day” — and decided it would be the perfect vehicle to load up with his outspoken atheism, and then dump it all over an unsuspecting audience.
Gervais plays Mark, a shapeless pudding of a man yearning for the nearest pretty girl (played with maximum blandness by Jennifer Garner) whom he fails to impress on a blind date — in a world where all people, everywhere, always tell the truth. Even the guys who write Coke commercials.
There is no such thing as fiction, so movies feature guys sitting in chairs reading history lessons. But why would such movies be “blockbusters,” as they are said to be? Other forms of entertainment (music, sports) don’t involve lying.
The one joke is so weak (an utterly charmless Tina Fey, as Mark’s assistant, spends about five minutes delivering variations on the same line — “I loathed almost every minute I worked for you,” etc. — and calls him a “fat faggot”) that there isn’t much for the audience to do except play gotcha with the conceit.
How’s this: A rest home where Mark’s mother is dying is labeled “A Sad Place for Hopeless Old People.” When he arrives he’s asked, “Are you here to abandon an elderly person?” Why the euphemism “elderly”?
The Garner character is guilty not of truth-telling but oversharing, an entirely different business. She starts the movie off with a bang, as it were, by confessing to Mark as he arrives for their date that she has been upstairs having sex. By herself. This wince-inducing smuttiness sets the sour tone of the movie.
Anyway, Mark’s boss (Jeffrey Tambor) not only doesn’t overshare but is also hesitant to come to the point. And is there any reason guest stars (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Edward Norton, Stephen Merchant) who don’t figure in the plot keep showing up?
There is some clever “Groundhog Day”-style silliness at the midway point when Mark discovers how to lie. Everyone believes him. First he enriches himself (as Bill Murray’s weatherman once did), then the lives of others. When his mom is about to die, Mark spins a story that she’ll soon be in a beautiful place, with all of her friends.
Word spreads quickly. Mark is obliged to explain — with 10 rules for the world. He wishes he had something “like tablets” to write them on. And lo, he uses Pizza Hut boxes. That company and Budweiser are likely to regret their prominent product placement, given what’s to follow.
Mark, who at one point is styled like Jesus (for no reason; the movie just thinks this is funny), tells the world that there is a “Man in the Sky” and that they are all going to a better place when they die, unless they commit three wrongs.
A labored and boorish satire turns bathetic in the end — from free will to whether Mark wins over the insipid girl — and its confidence in its own rationality often melts into a miserable certitude about the meaninglessness of everything. (Could a comedian possibly be depressed and convinced he’s smarter than everyone else? Nah.)
As for its attack on Christianity, that’s a soft target. Christians are seldom crazed. Let’s see how long it is before Gervais, or any other Hollywood star, delivers a feature-length assault on Islam.