5 Things You Should Know About . . . The Invention of Lying

1.  The premise of this movie is that human beings never "evolved" the ability to lie.  Simple enough. But you're not going to be able to immediately suspend your disbelief. Why?  It's not only that people can't lie, but they also don't know how to omit the truth by staying silent.  The result is that the people in this movie are talkative and really mean.  They tell you that they just masturbated, or that you're ugly, or that they think you're worthless.  Your reaction will be: "they don't have to say that stuff," and you're right.  To help you with this, I offer the following explanation:  If society developed amidst the inability to lie, people would be used to sharing everything and hearing the truth constantly.  If that's the way it always was, then the etiquette of not saying everything on your mind might not have developed.  Is this theory perfect? No, but it will help you deal with the premise.

2. Ricky Gervais (who starred in and co-wrote this film) assembled a surprisingly good group of actors to perform in relatively meaningless bit parts:  Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tina Fey, Jeffrey Tambor, Christopher Guest, Jason Bateman, and of course, his Office and Extras collaborator, Stephen Merchant (in an especially funny cameo).

3. Gervais' character spontaneously develops the ability to lie, but unfortunately, his manipulations are mostly limited to finding ways to make people feel better (sparing their feelings, giving them false hope) and stealing money.  Early on he attempts to use his ability to lie (and to be unquestioningly believed) to get laid, but quickly abandons it when it doesn't go exactly as planned.  I feel like the premise was fertile ground, but the lying techniques get pretty repetitive after awhile.

4. I dare you to not get choked up when Gervais' character invents religion at his mother's deathbed.  It's not first-ten-minutes-of-Up, but I admit, it got to me.

5. The last hour gets bogged down with the disillusionment of empty celebrity (on account of the character's invention of both fiction and religion) and a belabored and forced romance with a not particularly likable character played by Jennifer Garner.  Therefore I only recommend the first half, which contains some genuine laughs along with a serious exploration of this "thought experiment" of a premise.