BEFORE: Last night's film featured some big-league lying, plus earlier in the week "Another You" feature a compulsive liar character, so that leads me to this film, which flips the concept. Tonight is also the start of Daylight Saving Time, which really is a giant lie we tell ourselves every year, if you think about it. Anyone who says that there's a benefit to changing the clocks - be it energy savings, or health benefits, or economic reasons? More lies, lies and damned lies. What's that? We do it for the kids? OK, now you're just reaching. It's a crock.
Linking from last night is easy - Angelina Jolie was in "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" with Stephanie March, who has a cameo here.
THE PLOT: A comedy set in a world where no one has ever lied, until a writer seizes the opportunity for personal gain.
AFTER: This is something of a high-concept piece, showing a world much like our own, except that the human brain doesn't have the ability to lie, and every person is brutally honest. The arenas of filmmaking and advertising are the most changed from the ones we know, the implication being that both are essentially based on lies.
Until one man's brain somehow figures out that he can say something that isn't true (their language doesn't even have the word "true", since everything is that) and he uses this ability to get money, sex, and a career as a great screenwriter. In that sense, the film is a bit like "Groundhog Day", with one person having an ability no one else has, and using it to his advantage.
But I've got some problems with the concept - in a world without lies, would there even BE writers? Or casinos? Or burglars? Stealing is a form of lying, isn't it? A thief is just lying about whether that thing he stole belongs to him. And if people couldn't lie, that would mean they'd have no imagination, and then how did all of man's inventions come to be? Also, as depicted here, without the ability to lie, all humans would become naive, self-serving jerks. Where are the intelligent and nice people? What happened to the concept of "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all"? Would remaining silent always be considered a lie of omission?
I noticed there was no religion in the world, which is an interesting point - and late in the film, there's a whole riff on religion as a construct of lies, so that makes me think someone had an ax to grind, and therein lies the real message. I personally don't have a problem with religion, as long as people maintain the ability to think for themselves, and take the Bible lessons for their value, and not as historical facts.
But I wondered why the general populace in this film never figured out what a lie is, once they were introduced. My thought is that the concept would spread like a virus, and the world would change in a radically different way. I wanted to like this film, but I can't ignore that the premise fell apart about ten minutes in.
Starring Ricky Gervais (last seen in "Ghost Town"), Jennifer Garner (last seen in "Valentine's Day"), Jonah Hill (last seen in "Funny People"), Louis C.K. (another F.O.T.B., I've met him twice), Jeffrey Tambor (last seen in "The Hangover"), with cameos from Tina Fey (last seen in "Date Night"), Rob Lowe (last seen in "Thank You for Smoking"), Jason Bateman (last seen in "Couples Retreat"), Philip Seymour Hoffman (last seen in "Doubt"), Edward Norton (last seen in "The Illusionist"), John Hodgman, Fionnula Flanagan (last seen in "Yes Man"), Martin Starr, Jimmi Simpson (also seen in "Date Night"), and SNL's Bobby Moynihan.
RATING: 4 out of 10 casino chips
This is a movie that desperately needs a pain-in-the-ass producer or studio exec who questions every decision.
ReplyDelete"Why does your character bother to dunk his screenplay in coffee and beat it to hell?"
"Eh?"
"You've already established that in this world, there's no such thing as a lie. So if your character _says_ that he found this historical manuscript, nobody will question it. Are you now saying that people would be suspicious if the manuscript didn't look 600 years old?"
And that's just a silly, minor detail. The movie didn't really hold together for me because it didn't commit to the premise. It had a lot of potential. In essence, this man has the ability to create reality. That's ultimate power! What process does he go through when he realizes that he can have anything he wants, manipulate anybody into doing anything, and evade any possible consequences for his actions?
Presumably, the filmmakers thought a pedestrian "pretty girl/schlumpy but sincere man" movie love story would be more interesting.
The filmmakers and I disagree on this point.
I had the same thoughts that you did, too. OK, this is a world in which there's no such thing as a lie. Why does that imply that everybody _has_ to volunteer the compete truth, even when it's clearly hurtful?
Is Gervais saying that a lack of religion implies a lack of the fundamental humanist principles that guide nearly all faiths?
(Well, no.)
The religion angle is a fatal left turn and points out many of the basic problems with this movie. When the filmmaker explicitly says "A world in which there is no lying is necessarily a world in which there's no religion or belief in God"...whoof. It's not a problem in and of itself, but it's not a concept that the movie can just put out there and then walk away from.
And it feeds back to the need for a real humorless producer.
"Here on Page 42, the whole world believes that after they die, they will immediately enter a Paradise of luxury, comfort, and being reunited with all of your deceased loved ones."
"Yeah?"
"So where's the scene in which everybody immediately kills themselves?"