The Invention of Lying (2009)

I like Ricky Gervais, I'm a fan of his work you could say. I liked The Office, Extra's, his stand-up shows, and I quite enjoyed his last major film role before this, Ghost Town. I thought then I might also enjoy his last effort: The Invention of Lying. I thought wrong. They should have called it "The Invention of Boredom!"

A moderately interesting premise: a world in which lying didn't exist. Unfortunately however, the execution of this plot was poor. Why does not being able to lie mean people have to say stuff just to offend a person rather than shutting up, and the use of sarcasm by characters in the film seemed off, since sarcasm is a form of lying. I was willing to look past issues like these however as there will always be paradoxes and inconsistencies in movies dealing with altered realities. I could not however look past the fact at how unfunny this film was. Painfully unfunny. I thought it might have been jut a slow build up and when he started lying then the funny would begin; no.

The true reason for this film's creation manifested itself later on when Gervais' character told his dying mother a fairytale of how wonderful the afterlife is. This then leads him on to create the story of "The Man In The Sky" (God), which he delivers to inhabitants of this world on the back of two pizza boxes as they sat there lapping it up like brainless zombies, only to occasionally interrupt with well known inconsistencies with religious rules in our own world. The film then flops off into a micky-mouse love story.

Ricky Gervais is well known to be an outspoken Atheist, and that's fine, but the next time he decides to make a propaganda movie lets hope he makes it entertaining at least.