The Invention of Lying (2009)

Ricky Gervais stars as Mark Bellison in an offbeat but flawed comedy in which people are incapable of speaking nothing but the truth. When Bellison finds out that he can lie, he discovers that he has the means to change the world.

The concept is brilliant (imagine a world in which there’s no fiction of any kind), but somehow the film never develops its full potential. It’s especially intriguing as a critique of religion: when Bellison is overheard fibbing to his dying, frightened mother that she’ll have a wonderful afterlife, he accidentally creates a whole new belief system. But the anticipated satire on religion – a topic Gervais has strong opinions on – never really arrives.

There’s also a confusion between honesty and unkindness. Just because people speak the truth doesn’t mean they have to be rude and unpleasant. Wouldn’t kind people speak kind truths? We never find out because most of the characters are so obnoxious. This issue is complicated by the “love interest”, played by Jennifer Garner, who grows fond of Bellison but won’t marry him because he’s “fat” with “a snub nose”. She’d rather be with the callous, shallow egotist played by Rob Lowe because he apparently has better genes. It’s difficult to see why Bellison likes her.

Cameos by Christopher Guest and Philip Seymour Hoffman seem thrown away.

There are some funny moments, and the central premise is a fascinating one, but it just feels like a missed opportunity.

St. Elmo’s Fire (1985)

Fascinatingly 1980s “Brat Pack” drama about seven friends who have just graduated. They are about to embark upon adult lives, and they drink and smoke excessively while attempting to navigate their tangled relationships.

It’s possibly the template for Friends, but without the jokes and the strong writing. In fact, there’s something rather unappealing about the film’s self-consciousness.

Morally, it seems quite confused and the troubles encountered by these wealthy, spoiled kids – what we’d now call “first-world problems” – don’t seem especially important.

There’s a completely flawed thread about one of them (Emilio Estevez as Kirby) becoming obsessed with a medical student (Andie MacDowell). Something in the execution of this plot simply doesn’t ring true. It would have been a tighter storyline if he’d been infatuated with one of his six friends, pulling the focus back into the main group.

The seven main actors get equal billing in the credits (named alphabetically), which suggests there were ego and/or payment disputes in the background, but some of them are stronger than others. Demi Moore is probably the most credible as the cocaine-addicted party girl. Rob Lowe is hard to believe as the thrill-seeking, sax-playing Billy, who somehow had time to have a wife and child already. I also don’t believe Judd Nelson’s character would have liked Andrew McCarthy’s character, or that glamorous yuppie played by Ally Sheedy would have had time for earnest, frumpy girl played by Mare Winningham.

While there are some good lines (the script is better than it might have been), it’s ultimately as immature and shallow as its characters.