The Invention of Lying is a movie that I missed in the theaters (and on DVD), so I caught it on HBO this weekend. If you’re wondering why it’s reviewed here, it’s a movie which was set on a different world (that is much like ours, with minor changes to people). I enjoyed Ricky Gervais’s series (The Office and Extras) and thought that Ghost Town was under-rated. So how was the movie?

For those of you who haven’t heard of the premise, the movie is set in a world where no one can lie. Everyone tells the truth and in the most brutal honest way possible. Ricky Gervais is a documentary writer. The documentary writers comb through history for exciting stories, write scripts and readers record it for public consumption. Gervais’s character has picked 13th Century Europe and can’t seem to find anything exciting to write about. He has a boss (Jeffrey Tambor) who’s going to fire him (once he gets his nerve up), a secretary (Tina Fey) who can’t stand him and a VP (Rob Lowe) who can’t stand him either.He manages to get a date with a very attractive woman (Jennifer Garner)  who doesn’t think a second date will happen. So he’s stuck at the bar with his best friend (Louis CK) grumbling about life and going to his apartment with a landlord who’s going to evict him and a depressed neighbor (Jonah Hill).

Then Gervais learns to lie and the world changes for him. With lying, he can get money he doesn’t have from the bank. He can spice up 13th Century Europe with tales of flying saucers and he can accidentally invent religion. But at this point in the movie, it turns into a romantic comedy with Gervais trying to woo Jennifer Garner away from Rob Lowe. There seemed to be enough plot for a 30 minute show and it was stretched out over a 90 minute movie. And, as you can see from the plot description, this movie had everyone in it. Besides the main characters, the movie also guest starred: Christopher Guest, Martin Starr, John Hodgman, Jason Bateman, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Ed Norton and, of course, Stephen Merchant. It’s very distracting to the viewer to be pulled out by all the cameos.

The movie is decent for the first 30-40 minutes, but slowly loses steam and makes it hard to watch. Not truly recommended.