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Tuesday, March 23, 2010

I Recommend "The Invention of Lying" Because I Enjoyed It

I was on a plane and decided to tickle my fancy with the onboard entertainment; particularly a movie called The Invention of Lying. I anticipated that the movie would be a lark and I would bother everyone else on the plane with my raucous laughter and chronic knee-slapping. However, from essentially start to finish there was not even a whisper of laughter from my lips. My knees were not even CLOSE to being slapped and everyone on the plane had an enjoyable flight.
Except for me.
I was so disappointed at what I had assumed would have been a hilarious movie.

Ricky Gervais + Louis C.K. = hilarious [1]

This was the equation that I thought I had but upon rigorous analysis it was actually this equation:

Flaccid Penis + Vagina = Bad Sex [2]

The whole movie was basically like I was excited to get laid only to realize that my sexual partner was not attractive at all but then I was forced to have sex against my will. I just wanted it to be over to see if at least the ending would be good but it was not. Watching this movie was just like constantly thrusting my limp member into a relatively taught cavity without joy for an hour and a half with no sweet release at the end. Then I just felt ashamed and regretted ever watching it.

Where were the jokes? All the comedy was based on actors' reactions to various stimuli thrown into the movie. There were no written jokes or if there were I missed them.
I waited for the movie to get better but it didn't and then it went into a bizarre twist when it started going down a religious route. Mark Bellison's lie that invents the notion of a happy afterlife to cheer up a character who is dying takes the movie down a weird path that I wasn't expecting. A large portion of the movie then focuses on the lie of "The Man in the Sky" and proceeds to make other religiously themed jokes. I was confused, not entertained and soured to the whole movie.
Here's the thing. When I read The Chronicles of Narnia when I was a kid I never knew there were religious undertones to the series. I just thought it was a bunch of talking donkeys killing each other and was totally into it (because I was a kid and followed the relation in [3]). Even though C.S. Lewis intended it to be a religious series of books, I didn't like it for the religion when I was young. I didn't root for Aslan because he was Jesus; I liked Aslan because he was a badass fucking lion who took none of the White Witch's shit.
I wouldn't want to watch a movie that was blatantly pro-religion under the guise of being the next The Hangover.
Bruce Almighty was a similar type of movie. It was shitty for a number of different reasons but one of them was that it threw too much religion in your face (mainly secular, spirituality, Deepak Chopra shit). However, Bruce Almighty was about God. It never made any claims to not be about God. It was what it was in all its shitty glory. If I had known about the apparent large role that religion played in The Invention of Lying (like when Ricky Gervais looked like Jesus) I would have expected something much different.

I was disappointed because I expected a lot more funny and a lot less religious commentary. The only things I can conclude about life/this movie are as follows:

Kids = Dumb [3]
Title of this blog entry = Lie [4]