The Invention of Lying (2009)

Could you imagine a world in which everyone told the truth? Not only in situations where you asked someone a question, but all the time. So at the beginning of the date the other person immediately tells you what his/her plans are and what they think you. So no compliments to make you feel good, just what is going through the mind of that person.
This is the world of The Invention of Lying. It’s a funny starting point which does results in some good jokes in the first half of the movie. When Mark Bellison (Ricky Gervais) loses his writing job for a television network and gets into financial trouble he decides to make something up. This results in the world’s first lie. Because no one actually knows the concept of lying he sees a world full of opportunity.

He can tell a woman that the world will end unless she immediately has sex with him or his close friends that he invented the bike and they all believe him.
It’s a funny idea which gets stretched beyond the breaking point. Gervais is shown as Moses who tells the world he can talk to God. The result is a second half of the movie which just isn’t funny. The jokes don’t have the same wit and there are not a lot of laughs anymore. It’s something that would work as a short sketch, but as a feature-length movie it just doesn’t work.

There’s a subplot in the movie in which Mark tries to win Anna McDoogles (Jennifer Garner) heart, but by the time this is resolved I lost all interest. I really felt like I was just waiting for the movie to end. Despite the initial laughs, this movie left me disappointed and it’s a movie which I really don’t recommend watching.

Score: 5