If you've listened to any of Ricky Gervais' podcasts, you'll know that he is an unbelievably intelligent man. He can discuss philosophy, history, and the arts with the best of them. Just listen to his series of "Guide to..." podcasts in which he tries to explain these topics to his dim witted friend Karl Pilkington.
While his British audience is no doubt aware of this fact, his small American audience may not be. And why should they be? The little we've seen of him is in the Night at the Museum movies and Ghost Town, some very run-of-the-mill movies if there ever were any. This weekend however, American audiences got their first taste of Gervais in a movie that he had both written and starred in.
Now, I haven't seen The Invention of Lying yet, but I was wary of it right away. Most notably, the trailer didn't seem to get off to a great start. We're shown situations in a world that has yet to invent lying, that have nothing to do with lying at all. A waiter hands a drink to a woman and blatantly announces to her that he took a sip of it. That's not a world without lying, that is a world in which everyone is forced to tell people everything they've done or felt.
Still, the concept of a world without lies is one rich for the mining. Imagine the places you could go with that. Really dive into what kind of world that would be. Well, after listening to the spoiler filled discussion of the movie on the /Filmcast, I now know where he decided to go with it. A romantic comedy.
Sure, you could blame the studios, but I'm just going to put out another theory completely. Gervais is dumbing himself down to appeal to an audience that he doesn't think will understand anything more intelligent. I could be entirely wrong about this, but Gervais has burned me far too many times. I am prepared to offer him on more chance, and that chance is Cemetary Junction. The first release written by both him and Stephen Merchant. Will my hopes be shattered for the last time? I sure hope not.
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