The Invention of Lying
Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: October 2, 2009 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
58
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 31 Critic Reviews
Positive:
18
Mixed:
10
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
In its amiable, quiet, PG-13 way, The Invention of Lying is a remarkably radical comedy. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
The performances are razor sharp. And the ideas in this movie are, no kidding, big. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)David Edelstein
However cheeky and blasphemous, this is, at heart, a rather sweet little fable. Which of course would mean nothing if it weren’t explosively funny. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterMichael Rechtshaffen
Gervais and Robinson take what might have been a cute concept comedy and elevate it to delicious heights. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldConnie Ogle
Gervais' wickedly sly concept lingers quite awhile after the final chuckle. And that's the truth. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
The film doesn’t traffic in drollery for its own sake. Between laughs, Lying uses its skewed reality to comment on our own need to create useful fictions to wallpaper over the abyss. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianMarc Mohan
It's a fantastic high concept to wrap the film around, and Gervais comes close to fulfilling its potential, especially when he tells a comforting deathbed lie to his dying mother and accidentally invents religion. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia Puig
By adhering to the romantic-comedy formula, The Invention of Lying stops short of being truly inventive. But enough sequences are fresh and inspired to make this a comedy honestly worth catching. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
Ricky Gervais, instead of resting on formula and on a familiar persona, uses his first opportunity as a big-screen actor-director to make an original comedy that expresses some real thinking and feeling. Read full review
75
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
The cascade of ideas proves to be both pleasurable and frustrating. As the movie retreats into a happy-ever-after ending, even its outrageous lies seem more like little white ones. Read full review
70
SalonStephanie Zacharek
Gervais doesn't have movie-star good looks; it's his line delivery that has sex appeal. Read full review
70
VarietyJustin Chang
While it never tops the explosive hilarity of its first 20 minutes, The Invention of Lying is a smartly written, nicely layered comedy that, like last year's underappreciated "Ghost Town," casts Ricky Gervais as a mild-mannered schlub who manages, in spite of himself, to make the world a better place. Read full review
70
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
Like Gervais, the audience wants to see a struggle, which here comes down to whether unvarnished honesty or random acts of compassionate deceit will win the day. That alone makes for entertainingly high stakes. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleKimberley Jones
If anything, The Invention of Lying is too soft for the satirical promise of its premise. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
It's surprising to admit that the British comedian, known far and wide for his willingness to take risks, plays it safe in The Invention of Lying - a fault from which the movie never truly recovers. Read full review
63
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe Williams
This topsy-turvy flick is fitfully funny, but more often it's just odd, like the first draft of a "Twilight Zone" episode that's missing its moral. Read full review
63
Rolling StonePeter Travers
For its first stingingly funny half hour, The Invention of Lying had me thinking that Ricky Gervais had finally found a way to bring his indisputable brilliance at TV comedy (The Office, Extras) to the big screen. Then the air went out of the balloon. What a shame. Read full review
63
Philadelphia InquirerDavid Hiltbrand
Invention - a mash-up of two Jim Carrey comedies, "Liar Liar" and "Bruce Almighty" - flirts with being a one-gag pony. Shocking sincerity loses its comic impact after a while. Read full review
60
Time OutDavid Fear
Once the sharp, clever satire gives way to what feels like a special must-see-TV episode, the movie’s promise slowly deflates. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsJoe Neumaier
Once it's high-concept plot kicks in, Gervais' hilariously self-deprecating persona is really all that keeps it grounded. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderJ.R. Jones
The romantic plot, involving his unrequited loved for Garner, is soured by her character's unconcealed shallowness: she won't have him because his genes aren't up to snuff. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTy Burr
With The Invention of Lying, the British comic actor Ricky Gervais has come up with a wickedly funny idea for a movie - and then purged the wickedness right out of it. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
The result is an erratically funny but often frustrating comedy, with an interesting premise hobbled by internal inconsistencies and uneven writing. Read full review
50
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
While the movie is a conceptual pip filled with quotable laughs and gentle pokes at religious faith at its most literal, it also looks so shoddy that you yearn for the camerawork, lighting and polish of his shows. Read full review
50
New York PostKyle Smith
Turns out to be a dour, shouty atheist manifesto. With a change of scenery it could have been called "Godless in Seattle." Read full review
50
SlateDana Stevens
Despite the ambitious scope of its premise, this confounding, disappointing and, in the end, depressing movie is content to devote 80 percent of its screen time to wondering who gets to kiss the girl. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesBetsy Sharkey
Ultimately it's the characters who are the joke -- too thin, too vacuous, too unlikable for us to care what happens in the next 30 minutes, much less for the rest of their lives. Too bad, really, because the truth is Gervais is a very funny guy. The ugly truth is that The Invention of Lying isn't -- funny, that is. Read full review
40
The New YorkerAnthony Lane
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. (What director in his right mind would drop Tina Fey from the proceedings?) Read full review
30
Village VoiceNick Pinkerton
Lying brushes more big ideas than commonplace comedies, but hasn't taken those ideas through enough drafts to work out their implications or--harder still--make them killingly funny. Read full review
30
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
In the spirit of that world, I cannot tell a lie: The Invention of Lying, which the English comedian both directed and wrote with Matthew Robinson, soon loses altitude and eventually falls flat. Read full review
20
EmpireChris Hewitt (1)
Proof that when you aim for the stars, sometimes you find a black hole. Hopefully just an anomaly for the usually wonderful Gervais. Read full review
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