The Invention of Lying Reviews
Top Critic
There are cycles of inspiration and rebirth, but the barbed promise of the early going loses its way in choices aimed at sentimentality rather than, as Harvey Kurtzman memorably put it, humor in a jugular vein.
Full Review
| Original Score: C-
It's bogged down in too many squishy romantic-comedy pieties.
I think the first half hour would be almost impossible to sustain because it is so inspired.
The last third of the movie is as bad as anything I've seen this year, with the laughs trailing off, and half of the supporting characters, the zestier ones, being airbrushed from the frame.
That a great comic idea does not necessarily make for a great screen comedy is the lesson for first-time writer-director-star Ricky Gervais as he comes unstuck.
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| Original Score: 2/5
Despite the ambitious scope of its premise, this confounding, disappointing and, in the end, depressing movie is content to devote 80 percent of its screen time to wondering who gets to kiss the girl.
The romantic plot, involving his unrequited loved for Garner, is soured by her character's unconcealed shallowness.
The movie never surpasses the gleeful hilarity of the first 25 minutes, when it allows us to imagine just how crushing and soulless this nakedly Darwinian universe would be.
[It] does have its moments -- most of them courtesy of Gervais and his very specific brand of self-deprecating, always equivocating comedy -- just not nearly enough of them.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
The result is an erratically funny but often frustrating comedy, with an interesting premise hobbled by internal inconsistencies and uneven writing.
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| Original Score: 2/4
There's no doubting that this is one comic who can really act. But maybe Gervais should leave the directing to someone who knows how to tell funny stories on film, if such a talent can be found these days.
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| Original Score: 2/5
It would be such a joy to bend the truth and say that The Invention of Lying lives up to the potential of its inspired premise.
The small-town Massachusetts settings are certainly fresh, and some of the involuntary confessions are fun. But, all in all, itâ(TM)s not a great comedy. And thatâ(TM)s no lie.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
By adhering to the romantic-comedy formula, The Invention of Lying stops short of being truly inventive. But enough sequences are fresh and inspired to make this a comedy honestly worth catching.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Mr. Gervais's long-established gift for small-screen comedy goes terribly slack, leaving him likable, as always, but, on the big screen, looking lost.
To tell the truth, The Invention of Lying is a funny movie that fails to deliver on its first-half potential.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
There's no hope that Gervais' performance in The Invention of Lying will open up new hope for a different kind of leading man -- and that's what makes his resoluteness so great.
Marketed as a romantic comedy, The Invention of Lying turns out to be a dour, shouty atheist manifesto.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
It's no fun watching Gervais work out a tired fantasy of turning hot babes into chubby chasers. We want Gervais in all his merry, malicious glory. That's no lie.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
The Invention of Lying, in addition to being very funny and inventive, is an attempt at a genuine statement about life, social discourse and morality.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Ultimately, the small-scale, often downbeat jokes in Lying never quite match the grand concept.
A mostly funny if melancholic defense of deceit.
| Original Score: 3.5/5
[A] droll, witty and thoughtful comedy about the thing that really makes the world go round.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Sublimely funny, slyly satirical and deliberately designed to upset Aunt Prissy, The Invention of Lying weaves quite a wicked web.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Someday, Gervais will make a screen comedy both brilliant and consistent; in the meantime, The Invention of Lying will pass the time.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
With The Invention of Lying, the British comic actor Ricky Gervais has come up with a wickedly funny idea for a movie -- and then purged the wickedness right out of it.-
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
It also runs out of steam abruptly, as if there were nowhere else to go, but Gervais' wickedly sly concept lingers quite awhile after the final chuckle. And that's the truth.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Gervais, who co-directed and co-wrote with Matthew Robinson, walks a delicate tightrope above hazardous chasms.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
While it never tops the explosive hilarity of its first 20 minutes, The Invention of Lying is a smartly written, nicely layered comedy.
One of the fall's funniest films -- honest.
The Invention of Lying feels a little too much like a wasted opportunity.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
The truth? Ricky Gervais' jolting philosophical comedy The Invention of Lying is seriously subversive. What other rom-com would spend so much time making a convincing case that belief in an afterlife is a harmless load of bollocks?
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
Lying is good, but it could have been great. And that's no lie.
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| Original Score: 3.5/5
Once the sharp, clever satire gives way to what feels like a special must-see-TV episode, the movie's promise slowly deflates. Does that seem unduly mean? Sometimes the truth hurts.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Lying brushes more big ideas than commonplace comedies, but hasn't taken those ideas through enough drafts to work out their implications or -- harder still -- make them killingly funny.
The movie is something rare, a boisterous American comedy with the power to trigger philosophical disputes -- even, if taken really seriously, fisticuffs. One can hope!
