The Invention of Lying: The Gospel According to Ricky
Here’s what history looks like
The Invention of Lying
Director: Ricky Gervais & Matt Robinson
Release: October 2, 2009
**** 4/5
Who else but Ricky Gervais could make a story both so incredibly simple and also complicated, so comfortable to live in and so awkward to watch, so stupid and still so ridiculously smart?
The guy knows comedy. And in The Invention of Lying, he and Matt Robinson create a world where humans haven’t evolved the gene for lying yet and automatically, innocently and without filter, say exactly what they’re thinking exactly when they’re thinking it. Until Gervais’ character, a writer, discovers how to say something that’s not. And he runs with it.
I almost hate writing about this movie from a “Gervais” perspective because it seems to add onto a sort of cultishness around his work, but it feels unavoidable. He’s more and more becoming a sort of comedic icon and auteur, always expanding on similar themes, working in laughs that do more than make you laugh. They ask questions, come together to form a certain kind of history in chapters, a view of the world as seen through offices and movie sets and screenplays.
It’s the Woody Allen complex: Make a movie, usually a love story, and make it about something silly–a world where no one lies, maybe. Except, it’s never really about that. What’s it’s really about is faith, and morality, and philosophy. And that’s why when you talk about a Ricky Gervais piece–or a Woody Allen one–they always end up in that context. Because no one ever remembers who directed slapstick, and why should they? But put two pizza boxes with commandments taped on the back in Ricky’s hands, throw him before a mass of people looking for something more and, just like that, you’ve got a new generation’s Moses.
The Invention of Lying is as fun, light and funny as it is surprising and thoughtful, another one of Gervais’ more-than comedies that earns its laughs pretty quietly, sandwiching them between genuine purpose and an always weirdly spot-on human grounding. It marks yet another notch on Gervais’ history-making comedic bedpost, but in my theater at least, no one even seemed to care, their quiet sporadic snickering cautious like feeling out an object with their hands that they haven’t quite figured out the use for yet. One high school kid in particular, who pushed himself up the moment the screen turned black, said loud enough so all would hear, “Well that was fuckin’ awful.” As if he were legitimately offended, like the film had broken some kind of contract with him.
And maybe it did. The movie’s odd and non-traditional, more charactery than most comedies and not so much a string of laugh-out-louds as a constellation of them, the spaces in between changing pace and tone constantly.
So it’s ok. I figure a lot of “the Greats” weren’t appreciated much before they were put in books, anyway. I mean, at the risk of sounding crazy and bloated and literal, just look at Jesus. Poor guy got nails through his hands. Having a patchy following in the States, that seems like a pretty doable substitute.
This entry was posted on Saturday, October 3rd, 2009 at 1:31 am and is filed under film, reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
