{"id":4583,"date":"2009-10-02T02:49:33","date_gmt":"2009-10-02T06:49:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=4583"},"modified":"2009-10-02T03:34:27","modified_gmt":"2009-10-02T07:34:27","slug":"the-invention-of-lying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=4583","title":{"rendered":"The Invention of Lying"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"the<\/a>In a recent interview on Conan O\u2019Brien\u2019s late night show, Michael Moore told a story about the difficulty in making a movie about the evils of capitalism (his new film, Capitalism: A Love Story<\/em>, you can read my review her<\/span>e<\/span><\/a><\/span>, a longer version will appear soon) for a studio*, a business that thrives on capitalism. He said that he had to lie and tell them in his pitch that he was going to make a sequel to Fahrenheit 9\/11<\/em> and he avoided telling them the truth until the latest possible moment.<\/p>\n

One wonders if the writer\/directors of The Invention of <\/em>Lying, Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson had the same problem as Moore did; only they had<\/em> intended to follow through on their original pitch, and found themselves abandoning it. Gervais was probably offered a deal to make anything he wanted, after the huge critical and financial successes of his British TV shows The Office<\/em> (the original British series) and Extras<\/em>. And with such a promising idea in front of them, that being a man who lives in a world where everyone tells the truth, because lying hasn\u2019t been invented yet, until he discovers it, they probably thought it was a can\u2019t miss.<\/p>\n

\"theinventionoflying2\"<\/a>Unfortunately, Gervais and Robinson drop the truth-telling conceit almost immediately. Instead of everyone just giving honest answers to questions, characters offer up unmotivated insults, an expression of their true feelings, but it really just means they don\u2019t have that internal censor that most people have to make sure they aren\u2019t constantly offending society. The world wouldn\u2019t function if everyone\u2019s feelings were hurt all the time, and so Gervais\u2019 character, an unsuccessful screenwriter (in the world of The Invention of Lying<\/em>, they only make dry documentaries about historical events, and he\u2019s been burdened with the assignment of the 13th<\/sup> Century, so he mainly writes about The Black Plague), is apparently the only person that we see who actually has real emotions. It\u2019s a strange disconnect because the other characters have deliberately been made completely shallow, only interested in how people look and whether or not they\u2019ll make good genetic partners (everyone who isn\u2019t considered attractive is thought of as a loser). Some of this material is very funny, the opening scene has Gervais and love interest Jennifer Garner going on a blind date, and she immediately informs him that she would have been to the door earlier, had she not been masturbating. When Gervais visits his ailing mother, the local nursing home is labeled as being for \u201csad, lonely, old people.\u201d Gervais\u2019 secretary, played by Tina Fey, tells him that she\u2019s not going to bother doing any work that day, because his boss is going to come fire him, and instead she\u2019ll look for a new job on Craigslist.<\/p>\n

\"the-invention-of-lying-jennifer-garner-1\"<\/a>While The Invention of Lying<\/em> is going through these humorous variations on hostile venom unsheathed, it works. However, that\u2019s really just an idea for a short film and so Gervais and Robinson have to expand on their mutated concept to justify the cost. The more generic elements that are thrown onto the film like Velcro appendages are odd distractions; Garner\u2019s character is cold, mean, and humorless, and yet Gervais expresses frequently how she\u2019s the most fantastic person she\u2019s ever met. While that could be a joke on how shallow Gervais is, since the only possible reason he\u2019d want her is her elf-like good looks. Obviously the romance scenes are unconvincing and so the detour of The Invention of Lying<\/em> towards religious parables is an interesting respite, if a bit jarring. It also contributes to easily the most blatant product placement in the history of film, and not just because Budweiser bottles are center of frame in virtually every scene.\u00a0 In the midst of giving us a rather clever explanation for how religion, God, and Jesus might have become part of the collective consciousness, it appears that Pizza Hut may have sponsored the creation of the bible. Gervais reads from his fantastical script to a crowd full of people as two pizza boxes stare us down for at least ten minutes of screen time.<\/p>\n

\"The-Invention-of-Lying-budweiser\"<\/a>The shamelessness with which the advertising is presented almost makes you forgot the other portions of the film that normally would be quite the eyesore. The star cameos in The Invention of Lying<\/em> are non-stop, and always blatantly pointed out as if this were a Cannonball Run<\/em> sequel (Ed Norton as a cop! Phil Hoffman as a bartender! Jeffrey Tambor as a timid boss! And about twenty more!). It\u2019s annoying that just as it appears Gervais was trying to stretch himself, pushing different buttons than he did on TV, he falls back into the same traps that nearly drowned the intermittently brilliant Extras<\/em>, from the look-at-me celebrity cameos, the Woody Allenish verbal fumbling, and the reduction of every scene to exploiting the idea of a character too stupid to notice how racist, insulting, or homophobic what they just matter-of-factly uttered was. There\u2019s even a number of fat and flat-nosed jokes at Gervais\u2019 expense, though nothing as funny as David Bowie\u2019s impromptu song on Extras<\/em> (\u201cLittle fat man, chubby little loser…\u201d).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that The Invention of Lying<\/em> is a bad film, just very disappointing; there\u2019s certainly nothing as incisive or brutally and uncomfortably funny as Gervais\u2019 endless evisceration of his character in the second season of The Office<\/em>. There\u2019s also a logical inconsistency within the concept, that being that most of the world is pretty much the same, except for some goofy-looking street signs and all movies are dull, narrated documentaries. If all the ugly people are suicidal and no one will procreate with them, they\u2019d eventually die out. Gervais could have been one of the few average-looking people left, and trying to work around that, as opposed to his insistence on turning his character into both a genius and a martyr. Seems like he couldn\u2019t see past his flat nose.<\/p>\n

\"invention_of_lying_1\"<\/a>*In an ironic twist, two of the major financiers of Capit<\/span>alism: A Love Story<\/span><\/a>,<\/span> <\/em>The Weinstein Company and Paramount Vantage have virtually disintegrated financially. The Weinstein Company was lucky to have the recent success of Inglourious Basterds<\/em><\/span><\/a> to temporarily bail them out of a major hole, staving off immediate collection on large bank loans and Paramount Vantage no longer exists at all. Paramount has spent the last six months burning off the rest of their films with little to no marketing behind them (such as with The Marc Pease Experience<\/em><\/span><\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a recent interview on Conan O\u2019Brien\u2019s late night show, Michael Moore told a story about the difficulty in making a movie about the evils of capitalism (his new film, Capitalism: A Love Story, you can read my review here, a longer version will appear soon) for a studio*, a business that thrives on capitalism. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1517,5188,1735,1619,5675,5665,5668,5664,5678,5671,3356,8865,245,5660,3982,190,5663,2545,5672,1872,5312,5611,1125,3693,5656,555,5667,2214,5661,5658,5673,3979,4600,5662,5137,140,226,5674,2455,5189,2238,5659,5657,262,276,3275,5666,5677,5676,5669,4399,5670,1506,1167],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4583"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}