Movie Review: The Invention of Lying (2009)

The first thing that you need to know about this film is that it is a romantic comedy or nothing else I say will seem wondrous. The dumpy downy loser Ricky Gervais  plays a dumpy downy loser named Mark Bellison who lives in a world where one says exactly whats on one's mind, regardless of the social consequences. And who does Mark's, naturally, unrequited attentions fall on? Anna McDoogles (Jennifer Garner).

Louis C.K. plays the dim sloth, Greg, who is trying to ruin his life. Jonah Hill plays the severely depressed neighbor, Frank, that Mark befriends to keep from killing himself. Mark's antagonist Brad Kessler (Rob Lowe), is a shark that is better in every way than Mark and openly tries to ruin Mark's career and love life. To round out the cast Tina Fey plays Mark's hostile secretary.

Blah blah blah...Gervais becomes the first person ever to lie...blah blah blah...doesn't know how to handle the fame he achieves with it...blah blah blah...original, whatever. I don't really want to talk about Gervais' performance or the film's awkward structure, want to talk about Louis C.K. and Tina Fey. One is brilliant, the other is lacks luster.

(Finnish reading and watch a short interview with Louis C.K. after the jump)

Louis C.K. is a bright and shining example of boob comedy in the 21st century. Perfectly profuse (you can almost smell him off the screen) and just physical enough to highlight the comedic flaws of the character with out pulling a Happy Gilmore. This movie, however, is a Janus coin. As well done as Louis C.K.'s performance was Tina Fey's was just as poor.

Even with black hair and no glasses, nosy bitchy secretary is not within her range as an actor. This role proved that Fey should stick to a range of naive suburbanite with subtle prejudgments about the poor to quirky Buster Keaton boss.

Since you most likely will see this movie with a group of friends on video or as a compromise between Zombieland and Love Happens with your significant other the best psychological state to be in to begin watching The Invention of Lying is after a few glasses of Chilean Terrantez (Folgasão), reading Texts From Last Night for about ten minutes and a strong stomach for brutal honesty.