Review of The Invention of Lying (2009) by Jacobc — 01 Oct 2009

The Invention of Lying is half a good movie, which is why it get's half a good score. The first half of the movie is a smartly written and genuinely hillarious comedy, with some moments of pure brilliance you'd expect from Ricky Gervais.

However, the second half of the movie is exacly the opposite. Gervais' staunch atheism makes the story take an unexpected, unfortunate and, quite frankly, completely unneccessary turn for the worse.

The rest of the movie isn't only boring, it's also a bit preachy and pretentious. It goes from being one of the best comedies of the year to an excuse for Mr. Gervais to express his atheistic views.

Religion jokes can be funny if they're done right. Unfortunatly, in the Invention of Lying, they're not. Not only is the second act of the film slightly offensive, it's also annoying and pretty extreme, even for Ricky Gervais.

If you're an atheist you'll probably enjoy this movie a lot more than I did. But as someone who wasn't expecting atheist propaganda snuck into a funny romantic comedy, I found the movie pretty darn dissapointing.

I'm a huge Ricky Gervais fan, and while I don't share his beliefs, I respect them. However with this film he took it way too far, as they simply had no place in the movie.