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The Invention of Lying
Director: Ricky Gervais, Matthew Robinson
Release Date: November 26, 2009
Starring: Ricky Gervais, Jennifer Garner, Jonah Hill, Louis C.K., Jeffrey Tambor, Fionnula Flanagan
Language: English
Country: United States
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The Invention of Lying is a 2009 comedy film, written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson. It also stars Gervais and Jennifer Garner. The film was released in the United States on October 2, 2009. The film is set in an alternate reality in which no one has ever lied. Not only does no one tell a lie, but people often tell the entire truth, or blurt out very blunt remarks and opinions that people in normal society would normally keep to themselves. Organized religion does not exist, nor are there any forms of fiction, in both film and literature. Advertisements are not very flattering of their products.
Mark Bellison (Ricky Gervais) is an unsuccessful lecture-film writer (non-fiction films that are nothing more than an on-screen narrator lecturing about history), who is told by everyone that he is a fat loser. He goes out on a date with Anna McDoogles (Jennifer Garner), who bluntly states to Mark that she is not attracted to him due to his looks and his unsuccessful financial situation, but is going out on a date with him to satisfy her mother and that she doesn’t want to be alone for the rest of her life. After the date, she admits that she had a better time than she thought she would.
The next day, Mark is fired from his job due to a lack of viewership interest in his films about the Black Plague. He is also $500 short of his rent which is $800. Depressed he goes to the bank in order to close his account and use the money to have his stuff moved out of his house. The computer records system is not working so Mark is required to specify how much money he has suddenly without knowing why he tells a bank teller that he has $800. The teller gives him the money, assuming that the computer made a mistake. Mark is now able to pay his landlord. Excited by what has occurred he believes his ability will astound people. He demonstrates lying to his friends but without any conception of the concept they believe everything he says such as “I’m a pirate” Mark realises they are unable to comprehend lying so he thinks of ways to use it to his advantage. He decides to give his lies a big test, first by telling a random woman on the street that the world will end unless she had sex with him that very moment. However, before he has sex with her, Mark, feeling what he did was wrong, pretends to receive information that the world won’t actually end and that they didn’t have to have sex. He also saves his friend, who was driving quite drunk, from being arrested, by simply telling the officer that he wasn’t drunk. He begins lying to others and helping people feel better about themselves and help others with their relationships, and even helps a homeless man get money. He goes out on another date with Anna, who appears to show a little more respect for Mark but still bluntly states that she is not attracted to him.
That night however, his mother is dying of a heart attack. His mother is upset because she believes that when she dies, she will go into a state of nothingness. In the final moments before her death, Mark makes up a comforting story about “a kind of place you go to after you die”, where she will be young and happy and be with the people she loves, and this makes her happy, right before she dies. However, with other people in the room, word of what he told his mother spreads, and millions around the world believe he is a kind of Messiah, or Prophet. In order to satisfy their curiosity, he tells them there is a man in the sky, who controls everything, and that they are allowed to do 3 bad things in life, or they won’t be allowed into the eternal afterlife, where everyone will have a mansion, be young, be with the people they love, and have whatever they want.
Mark uses his ability to lie to make up interesting stories for his lecture film company, resulting in fame and fortune. He also wins Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year Award”. He buys a mansion, and he lets his friends, including Anna, live with him. Mark and Anna also become much closer. She appears to love him, telling him that he is very smart, and that he is the sweetest guy she has ever met, but she bluntly states that she is afraid to be with him because she does not want her kids to have his genetic make up of being “chubby and snub-nosed”. Mark teaches her to look beyond people’s appearances and try to see deeper. Anna asks him if being rich and successful can change people’s genetic make-up. Mark tells her the truth and says “No”. One day, on Mark’s birthday, Anna gives him a birthday coupon for sex. However, before he opens his present, she also reveals that she is going on a date with Brad Kessler (Rob Lowe), Mark’s enemy and rival in Lecture Films. Mark tries to persuade her not have sex with him unless she is married to him because “that’s the rule”, but this is before he opens Anna’s present, making her present useless.
When Anna and Brad go out on a date together, Brad makes Anna uncomfortable with blunt remarks about not wanting her to get fat, and that she will be old and ugly one day, and is quite rude (in normal reality standards) to her mother over the phone. Anna tells her mother that she loves Mark, and that Mark makes her feel special. However, her mother pressures her to continue dating Brad because he is better-looking and is a much better genetic make-up for her kids.
Afterwards, Mark does not see Anna for awhile, and becomes depressed, letting his hair and beard grow (so that he looks very much like traditional portraits of Jesus). Anna comes by, pleading with Mark to come to her wedding. She tells Mark, yet again, that Brad is the ideal genetic make-up for her, and that she only has a limited amount of time before she becomes old and ugly and unattractive to men. Mark tells her that she will never look ugly to him. His friend, Greg (Louis C.K.), who has been living with him, persuades him to go, saying “You haven’t lost yet.” Mark goes to Anna’s wedding (after cutting his hair and shaving his beard), which is held in a church-like “Place to reflect on The Man In The Sky”. Mark stands up and objects when the “priest” gives the cue to do so. Brad and Anna both tell Mark to just tell them what “The Man In the Sky” wants for Anna to do (since everyone believes that The Man In The Sky speaks through him), but Mark refuses. When Mark walks out of the wedding, Anna walks out and pleads with him to tell her what The Man In The Sky wants. Mark admits to her that he has a special ability to “say what isn’t” (a.k.a. to lie), and that there is no Man In The Sky, and that he made it up to make his mother happy before she died. Anna, puzzled, asks Mark why he didn’t just say “yes” when she asked him if being rich and successful can change one’s genetics. Mark states that it’s because he didn’t want to deceive her like that and hurt her. Anna, happy to know the truth, tells Mark that she knows what she wants: chubby kids with snub noses.
Anna and Mark later get married, and have a son (with another child on the way), who is also chubby and snub-nosed like Mark, and has inherited his father’s genetic ability to lie.
Cast:
- Ricky Gervais as Mark Bellison
- Jennifer Garner as Anna McDoogles
- Rob Lowe as Brad Kessler
- Louis C.K. as Greg
- Jonah Hill as Frank
- Christopher Guest as Nathan Goldfrappe
- Tina Fey as Shelley
- Roz Ryan as Nurse Barbara
- Jeffrey Tambor as Anthony James
- John Hodgman as Priest
- Jimmi Simpson as Bob
- Fionnula Flanagan as Martha Bellison
- Stephanie March as Woman on the Street
- Jason Bateman as Doctor (cameo)
- Stephen Merchant as Home Owner (cameo)
- Philip Seymour Hoffman as Bartender (cameo)
- Edward Norton as Traffic Cop (cameo)
- Martin Starr as Waiter
- Shaun Williamson as Richard Bellison
- Donald Foley as Yelling Man
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