The first paragraph of a film review from the New Yorker Magazine...
The new Ricky Gervais film, “The Invention of Lying,” postulates a world in which no one has ever told a lie. We know this because the hero, Mark Bellison, played by Gervais, tells us all about it in an opening voice-over. It is the first, small warning sign that the movie may not be firing right: what level of confidence can you have in your own comic device—the conceit that will power the whole story—if you feel the need to explain it before the drama gets under way? One delight of “The Truman Show” was the onus it placed on viewers from the start, both daring us and trusting us to work out, at our own speed, just what the hell was going on in that spotless seaside town. No such joy from Gervais, who wrote and directed the new film with Matthew Robinson, and who seems to have mislaid the T-shirt that is handed to every first-time movie director—the one that reads “Show, Don’t Tell.”
The new Ricky Gervais film, “The Invention of Lying,” postulates a world in which no one has ever told a lie. We know this because the hero, Mark Bellison, played by Gervais, tells us all about it in an opening voice-over. It is the first, small warning sign that the movie may not be firing right: what level of confidence can you have in your own comic device—the conceit that will power the whole story—if you feel the need to explain it before the drama gets under way? One delight of “The Truman Show” was the onus it placed on viewers from the start, both daring us and trusting us to work out, at our own speed, just what the hell was going on in that spotless seaside town. No such joy from Gervais, who wrote and directed the new film with Matthew Robinson, and who seems to have mislaid the T-shirt that is handed to every first-time movie director—the one that reads “Show, Don’t Tell.”
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