It's been over a year since I reviewed Ghost Town, the first mainstream Hollywood with Ricky Gervais as the lead and to put it mildly the man has been busy. To name but a few of the Englishman's activities he has reprised his role as Dr McPhee in Ben Stiller's Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, he has continued his role as exec' producer in NBC's The Office, and amongst other things found time to co-write/direct and star in the movie I saw last night!I have said before that I am a big Gervais fan, loving both the UK and US versions of The Office, his HBO show Extras and thinking Ghost Town was a relatively funny film. So I walked into Invention of Lying trying to temper my expectations and hoping that all the best jokes weren't in the trailer. Well they kind of were. The first twenty minutes of this film had me laughing out loud but the mirth soon faded and distressingly we soon ended up in middle of the road Hollywood comedy territory without any of the wit and punch you expect from a script written by such a talent.
The premise for the film is a certainly one with great comedy potential as we are introduced to Mark Bellison (Gervais) who lives in a world where lies have never been told and there is no such thing as fiction. Everyone speaks the truth and conversation is free of tact and diplomacy (just imagining such a world is 50% delight and 50% terror!). In the first part of the movie Bellison works as a screen writer for 'Lecture Films' who offer the only cinematic entertainment around in the forms of transcripts of history given by a character played with amusing pomposity by Christopher Guest. Saddled with the unfashionable 13th century and unable to make the Black Plague appealing to a mass audience Mark is fired providing much delight to his nemesis and rival screenwriter Brad Kessler, played with perfect distaste by the 'I get better as I get older' Rob Lowe. Bellison's love life is taking a similar trajectory when a blind date with Anna played by Jennifer Garner is full of awkward moments as the truth comes out rarely in the form of a compliment towards him. To make matters worse when visiting his sick mother in a home she also joins in the chorus of 'loser' adding to his misery. All of which gives Gervais ample opportunity to pull his trademark expressions of polite despair and let out the most sighs per minute perhaps ever committed to the screen.
The story then turns and actually loses itself somewhat when Mark tells his mother a lie to offer comfort in her dying moments and the doctors and nurses over hear thus committing Mark to a life of fame as the only man in the world to know what happens after you die. This leads him down a path of increasingly complicated lies about a 'man in the sky' and 10 rules he has made up that 'the man' has told him about what happens after you die and the kind of life you should live to be able to get to the happy place where 'everybody gets a mansion!'. Nauseatingly for the viewer Mark presents his 10 rules on the back of Pizza boxes going down as one of the most obvious product placements in a movie I have seen for sometime. The film drifts on after that with the romance with Anna slowly developing as she fights to ignore the fact that children with Mark would be 'fat and stub nosed'! Mark ends up going to a casino and wins money to help his friends while still trying to convince Anna that she should look beyond Brad's perfect genes and in her heart to see what really counts in life.
This really was a film of two parts for me. The first 20 to 30 minutes are absolutely perfect with Gervais playing the downtrodden Mark beautifully with a world weariness that will remind you of Dr Pincus' best moments in Ghost Town. The jokes are clever and situations all designed to engage maximum discomfort from the fact that everyone is forced to tell the truth ... if you can imagine what a waiter might be forced to tell you in these circumstances you will be wincing already. There are a couple of very funny cameos from Gervais' big name Hollywood friends that are so unexpected they startle you but still fit in just fine. The characters played by Jonah Hill (depressed and suicidal neighbor) and Louis C.K as Marks pal are literally worthless as they have so little impact but again in that first part of the movie they work OK to show us just how crazy this world of honesty really is. It's when Mark becomes famous that the characters fade into the background and the whole story begins to plod. I actually found myself sighing halfway through as I couldn't believe a film could go from so funny to so mundane in such a short space of time.
I will keep going to see movies that Gervais writes and stars in because I think if he can get it right, or at least keep studio exec's from interfering, he will produce a comedy good enough to stand up with the very best. If I think about the 'start to finish' pleasure I had watching Yes Man I realize that Invention of Lying was sadly a pretty poor movie. Over a year ago I described Ghost Town as ' ... a solid 103 minutes of pleasant distraction but it also verged on being one of those movies that you saw all the good gags in the trailer.'. I am sorry to say the same crime has been repeated here.
Rating: **
P.S If you are an Eastenders fan from the UK you will have a momentous laugh when Barry turns up unexpectedly semi-reprising his role from Extras with Stephen Merchant.
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