Ricky Gervais Learns How to Lie in The Invention of Lying

Imagine a world where no one tells a lie. If you come out wearing a new outfit and ask for everyone's opinion about how you look, they are going to tell you exactly what they think and not hold anything back. It would be the kind of world where writers of fiction do not exist because, well, when you look at fiction it's really lying. There are no movies as we know them. Instead, screenwriters just write about history and a man reads about those events in history, from a chair, at the camera. This is the world envisioned by Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson in the movie The Invention of Lying now available on DVD and OnDemand.

Ricky Gervais, I feel, is just about the funniest man walking the face of the earth right now. If you ever happen to catch one of his shows where he riffs of everything from Hitler to the Bible, you are in for quite a treat. Here, he helps write and direct a movie about a world where there is no lying, no fiction, no acting and no religion.

Gervais plays Mark Bellison who writes for Lecture Pictures. The problem is, he has gotten the world century in history and his movies are terrible. He has just attempted to turn the Black Plague into a movie and it has bombed worse than any movie in Lecture Pictures history. As such, he is in danger of losing his job.

Bellison is, well, a guy who looks like Ricky Gervais. So, he is unlucky at love. At the start of the movie we see him going on a date with Anna McDoogles, played by Jennifer Garner, and she immediately tells him they are incompatible. See, she wants to have handsome children and not chubby children with pug noses. This, as you might guess, creates an awkward first date.

After Bellison loses his job he steps foot into a bank to withdraw the last of the money in his account and he discovers something. He discovers that he can lie. Since he is the only person in this world capable of lying, everyone around him believes every lie he says. There is a very funny scene that takes place in a bar between Bellison and his friend Greg (Louis CK) and the bartender (Phillip Seymour Hoffman). Whatever he tells them, they instantly believe even if he is telling them he has only one arm, is black and invented the bicycle.

What is he to do with his newfound powers? Well, that sets up the rather interesting, an potentially controversial, part of the movie. Bellison, in an attempt to comfort his mother, who is dying, invents God and religion on the spot. Those around him are electrified by the stories of a happy place where everyone gets a mansion, and is watched over by a Big Man in the Sky, who decides who goes to this happy place or who goes to the awful place. Before long, Bellison is reading the decrees of religion from the backs of two pizza boxes in front of his apartment building and creating religion.

This is a very funny movie. Yes, it has a bit of an edge too it with its very pointed and all-too accurate jabs at religion. To some, perhaps, this might be offensive. Personally, as someone who was raised a Christian and still considers himself one, I found it very funny. I think it takes some nice shots at how organizing religion is a bad idea even if the idea of religion itself might have benign origins.

Gervais is very funny. The movie, however, is a cameo-fest. The sheer number of actors who show up for small roles is amazing and can become a game in and of itself. Jason Bateman, Edward Norton, Tina Fey, Stephan Merchant, Christopher Guest all make cameos. All of them are very funny.

Jennifer Garner shows she can do comedy quite well. However, there is something about her character that never quite gelled with me. At one point Gervais goes on and on about how wonderful she is, but I found myself wondering how he saw all of that in her character. I also just found something about her hair or her appearance in this movie that didn't quite work with me. In short, I am not entirely sure she is the person I would be encouraged to create an entire religion for.

I am not sure all of the rules of this fictional world work. I mean, just because everyone has to tell the truth, does this mean people would really walk up to you and immediately reveal embarrassing things about themselves? Would a waiter walk up with menus and say, "Embarrassed to be working here." Or would a cocktail waitress at a casino immediately say to two people she just met, "I really wanted to be a stripper but I'm not good-looking enough?" I'm not entirely sure, but these are minor quibbles.

The movie ultimately turns very sweet. It is, overall, a love story between Garner and Gervais' characters. Perhaps it reaches a little too hard to tug at heart strings, but that too can be forgiven. The laughs it gives are genuine and this very sweet movie shows it has a heart as well as teeth to bite a little bit. Ultimately, though, even the biting is all in good fun.