God & Ricky Gervais

To make his first film as writer and director (along with Matthew Robinson), Ricky Gervais seems to have made a pact with the devil, so to speak. The Invention of Lying has a brilliant and thought-provoking "indie film" premise but it comes wrapped up in mainstream Hollywood romantic comedy packaging, and that packaging ultimately overwhelms the interesting gift inside (yes, a tortured metaphor if ever I wrote one).
Gervais and Robinson have dreamed up a world in which the ability to lie never evolved. People never say what isn’t true and have no concept of lying, to the point where there apparently is no such thing as fiction—Gervais's character works at a film studio and all films are tedious historical documentaries. There is also, we eventually learn, no such thing as religion since no one has made up stories about gods or afterlives. As Gervais' mother lies dying in a hospital bed, horrified at the prospect that life is over, Gervais desperately tries to console her by telling her she’s going to a better place where everyone has a mansion and she’ll see all her old friends again. Mom dies with a smile on her face and the nurses who overheard his story spread the word about this afterlife, not realizing he made it up. Soon he has become a somewhat unwilling prophet, a combination of Moses and Jesus, improvising stories about a big man in the sky who has given him rules for living for the crowds who have come to his door.

This is a daring and refreshing premise for a movie: to take for granted that religions are not "true" in the rational historical sense. And it did provoke me to thinking: while I'm on Gervais's side and not a believer in any religion (I'd sooner believe in the Greek gods than the Holy Trinity), I also am not sure I'd say that every religious prophet is a "liar." If a person really believed that Jesus Christ died, was resurrected, and went to Heaven to save our souls, I wouldn't say that he is lying. Rather than believing something that isn't so, he is believing something that would seem to be against rational thinking, but that isn't necessarily a lie. More interesting is the idea that religions are fictions, told and believed for a variety of purposes, from social control to placating the sick and depressed, but this isn't explored at all in the film.

At any rate, this is bracing stuff for a while, and it's also funny to see people unable to tell even "white lies" for social convenience. Jennifer Garner, the woman Gervais is dating, tells him time and time again that he's too short and pudgy to be good genetic stock for her childbearing efforts. When he arrives for their first date, he says she seems distracted and she admits that she had been in the middle of masturbating, then goes off to finish before they leave for dinner--funny, it was always my experience that masturbating happened *after* dinner, when the date didn't go like you wanted it to. The centerpiece of the movie seems to be Gervais's delivery of his made-up "ten commandments," written out on two tablet-like pizza boxes; this plays out like an inspired bit of stand-up comedy and is indeed quite funny. But eventually, the triangle between Gervais, Garner, and the handsome but shallow Rob Lowe takes center stage and the movie winds up safely in romantic comedy territory.

Still, it's different for a Hollywood film. I'm not sure how I feel about Ricky Gervais. I liked his series Extras, but didn't love it. I liked The Office OK, but didn't keep watching it. He does the schlubby everyman bit well (an everyman who is often a bit of a jackass), but he will need to either grow beyond that or flesh it out a bit to sustain a movie career. I do recommend this film and give big points to Gervais for going where few others have gone before him.