The Invention Of Lying (2009)
This is another American comedy film, although this was co-written, co-produced, and co-directed by English-born Ricky Gervais, who also plays the main character. Now Ricky’s career has taken rather a lot of unusual swerves over the years, involving music and comedy. In the 80s, he had an attempt at becoming a pop star, which wasn’t very successful.
But I was rather amused when I found an old Smash Hits article online that predicted who they thought would be the big new stars of 1984, and his group Seona Dancing was on the list, along with others including Madonna, and one definitely ended up doing better than the other. But by the 90s, he had got into comedy, including his rather bizarre show on radio station XFM.
His TV work included appearing on Channel 4’s The 11 O’Clock Show, along with eventually having a comedy show of his own, and he definitely didn’t really seem to care about who he wound up. This then led to The Office, which was a big triumph, and this led to his breakthrough in America. Suddenly he was one of the big stars too, playing a dolphin in Family Guy was only a part, who would’ve thought it.
He now likes to host awards ceremonies, and make everyone cringe with his mildly rude jokes. Well Tom Hanks didn’t know where to look! He’s certainly stirred things up. And where is Madonna now? I didn’t expect all of this to happen when he was shouting at people on XFM all those years earlier I must admit. Fame at last! And the films that he has appeared in include this one.
Another reason that I was interested in seeing The Invention Of Lying is because also among the cast is Jennifer Garner, who also starred in the creative and rather explosive drama series Alias, so it was good to see her again, especially in a comedy role this time. It was rather odd to hear Ricky’s English accent clash against all of the Americans, but I don’t think that you’re supposed to notice that.
This film features a world where there is no lying, so at the start the characters are amusingly blunt about sharing their thoughts and feelings. But what would happen if you could lie? Mark accidentally invents the lie, but he doesn’t realise what the consequences are going to be. Suddenly he is rather successful, but should he confess that he got there by being so dishonest?
DVD extras on The Invention Of Lying include deleted scenes, along with some corpsing outtakes, which there are rather a lot of. Put it this way, if laughter does make you healthier and help to make you live longer, then Ricky will probably live to about 125. This isn’t the only film that he starred in around this time, the big show-off, I’ll review some more soon.
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