A number of familiar obstacles stand between Mark Bellison (writer-director Ricky Gervais) and his beautiful date, Anna McDoogles, (Jennifer Garner) in the first scene of "The Invention of Lying" (2009). They include Mark's lack of financial assets, his soon-to-be lack of employment, his lack of any apparent talent that could remedy those situations and the obstacle that proves most difficult to overcome his chubby, snub-nosed exterior.
It is, perhaps, in recognition of our own superficial tendencies that we are first introduced to Mark through a voice-over. He is to be our witty, likable guide through the film's bizarre world, and it is important that we first connect with him as a person and not as an average-looking face as the other characters do.
In the film's alternate reality, humans have never developed the ability to lie or deceive, or, apparently, to keep their mouths shut when decorum would normally dictate that some harsh comments be left unsaid. Such a world is not kind to a guy like Mark, who is constantly insulted for his unattractiveness and demeaned at work for his lack of success.
Just as Mark hits rock bottom, things change, as they tend to do for lovable losers. He can no longer afford his $800 rent and goes to the bank to withdraw the few dollars he has left and cancel his account. The bank teller informs him that the bank computer system is down and asks him how much money was in his account. After a rather cheesy computer generated image of synapses firing, Mark answers, "I have 800 dollars." Mark has inadvertently uttered the world's first lie.
Mark's "invention of lying" sets off a series of adventures both funny and touching as he experiments with the novelty of lying. He winds up rich, respected, and even wins a second date with Anna.
Things cannot remain so joyous, however, and the plot takes a turn when Mark's mother (Fionnula Flanagan) becomes ill. In a surprisingly touching and beautifully acted deathbed scene, Mark soothes his mother's fear of dying by telling her an idyllic story about the place you go when you die, where you see everyone you love and everyone gets a mansion.
Several of the hospital staff overhear Mark's story and, taking it for fact, want to know more. Soon the whole world is clamoring to hear what Mark knows about the afterlife, leaving him an unsuspecting prophet. Under immense pressure to share his "knowledge," Mark makes a genuine effort to improve the state of the world by imagining a story that amounts to a less sophisticated version of Christianity.
The film then veers rather haphazardly between Mark's continually frustrated attempts to woo Anna and brief scenes satirizing everything from religion to love to Coca-Cola. Eventually, though, Anna's choice to date the rude, arrogant, chauvinistic, boorish and extremely good-looking Brad Kessler (Rob Lowe), who happens to be Mark's ex-rival from the office, sends Mark into deep depression and forces him to face many of the philosophical implications that come with his ability to lie, which makes for a much more serious and thoughtful third act.
The fact that the film can move so fluidly from broadly comedic to satirical to thoughtfully reflective attests to Gervais' competency as a writer and to the power of his premise. Much as the single driving force behind Mark's success is his ability to lie, the driving force behind the film is the power and potential of the premise of a brutally honest world. The premise is so good that it seems impossible for Gervais to go wrong.
Although he undoubtedly recognizes the satirical potential of complete honesty through a series of truth-in-advertising gags, one gets the feeling that the film's humor is perfunctory. Gervais hits all the obvious jokes and he makes them funny but with such a fertile premise, one expects the humor to go deeper and be used more creatively.
Luckily, Gervais the actor is a more subtle and acute comedian than Gervais the writer. He plays his role with such good humor and irony that I often found myself laughing before a joke had even been made, just because of Gervais' facial expressions.
It helps that Mark is the only even remotely relatable character at the beginning of the film. The other characters all seem so different and strange in their honesty because they are unashamed of it and remain stone-faced when confronted with the awkwardness it causes. It makes the film difficult to settle in to, but pays off in the end because of the connection it creates to Mark and eventually to Anna, who seems to possess a bit of Mark's understanding, if not his ability to lie.
Although Mark and Anna are ultimately redeemed, the rest of humanity seems hopelessly stupid and superficial in this alternate reality, which may lead to important considerations about the film's "honest" view of human nature. No message is ever really communicated, however, and the film ends in a voice-over that returns it to the realm of broad comedy. It prompts the question of whether "The Invention of Lying" fails to take a powerful premise to its full potential, or whether it simply knows its limits: a question that I cannot honestly answer.