Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: The Invention of Lying (2009)

This is topic The Invention of Lying (2009) in forum Film Handlers' Movie Reviews at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 09-11-2009, 12:59 AM:

Screened at the Gateway Megaplex 12 in Salt Lake City during the Rocky Mountain Theatre Convention.

Presentation - top notch again. This theatre does it all correctly, they even nailed the afternoon's slate of trailer reels (mostly shown from DVDs but still looked decent, even on the 40' screen).

Anyway - This is a typical Ricky Gervais comedy, in other words veddy veddy British.

The story takes place in this sort of parallel world where nobody can lie, for whatever reason. So a typical date might start off with the woman saying "I'm disappointed in your looks, so there's no chance I'm sleeping with you." You can do the math from there.

There aren't really any laugh-out-loud lines or scenes, but a lot of good chuckles during the first half. Then during the seoond half, the film turns into sort of a combination love story and metaphysical opinion piece about "the afterlife" and starts to slow down at that point.

My recommendation is to watch the first half of the movie until something very traumatic happens to Ricky (which I won't reveal so as not to spoil it), then go across the hall and watch the ending of something else.

Jennifer Garner was pretty good, and Jeffrey Tambor was once again underused (as he is in pretty much every movie he's in these days).

My wife and I both thought it was OK. I would say, 2.333 stars. Probably will do some business in the cities but small towns...forget it, unless your market is into British comedies.