Not funny or surreal enough to distract you from its shortcomings and not subversive enough, if at all, to actually have something to say.

| Aug 30, 2018

Somewhere between a great concept and an awful script The Invention of Lying got lost in its own truth gimmick. But the truth is, it starts bad and just gets worse.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Feb 6, 2018

I kid you not when I say I sat there wondering is there nothing more to this film? Am I overlooking something? I don't think so, and I couldn't wait for the lights to go up.

| Jan 17, 2018

| Original Score: B+ | Feb 18, 2012

| Original Score: C- | May 6, 2011

Fans of Gervais from the classic 온라인카지노추천 shows Extras and The Office will enjoy the half-sentences, stop-start comic delivery and awkward pauses that have become his trademark.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 26, 2009

There are cycles of inspiration and rebirth, but the barbed promise of the early going loses its way in choices aimed at sentimentality rather than, as Harvey Kurtzman memorably put it, humor in a jugular vein.

| Original Score: C- | Nov 22, 2009

What was really clicking in a sort of Albert Brooks meets Woody Allen sort of way suddenly runs out of steam, the laughs still there just now fewer and much further between.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 9, 2009

It's bogged down in too many squishy romantic-comedy pieties.

Full Review | Oct 5, 2009

I think the first half hour would be almost impossible to sustain because it is so inspired.

Full Review | Oct 5, 2009

The last third of the movie is as bad as anything I've seen this year, with the laughs trailing off, and half of the supporting characters, the zestier ones, being airbrushed from the frame.

| Oct 5, 2009

That a great comic idea does not necessarily make for a great screen comedy is the lesson for first-time writer-director-star Ricky Gervais as he comes unstuck.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 4, 2009

His comedy pretends to be unthreatening, a harmless little wheeze, and then pushes the envelope to its logical conclusion.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 4, 2009

The Invention of Lying is an underdeveloped work from an overindulged comic.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 4, 2009

The laughs rain down early on; later - Messiah moment apart - they thin to a drizzle, deprived of variation.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 4, 2009

This topsy-turvy place hasn't the watertight consistency to persuade us, and its star, for all his talent, is not a romantic comedian. That's the truth as I see it.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 4, 2009

A long, impressively clever sketch that gets hung up on being a sweet-and-sour romcom.

Full Review | Oct 4, 2009

Go in with (very) low expectations and they may just be surpassed.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 4, 2009

Despite its flaws, The Invention of Lying is Gervais's best film outing to date. It draws his talent into alignment with some comedy classics, and shows that he has the intelligence to go for invention and originality.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 4, 2009

Fact: There's good Gervais and bad Gervais. And this is him at his pompous worst - preachy, one-note and obsessed with smug celeb cameos.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 4, 2009