So, The Invention of Lying has been on my "I want to see this" list for a while, and I finally checked it off. It's an interesting concept that holds up relatively well through the first half of the movie. Ricky Gervais's performance is much more tender than I'd expected it would be, sort of the flip side of his curmudgeon in Ghost Town, which I liked very much. The moment when he lies to a despondent Jonah Hill, telling him things will get better, and Hill begins to hope again may be the most accomplished acting moment of the younger man's career, and it's lovely.
But the real problem I had with the movie is that the sets looked unbelievably, distractingly cheap. It was as if they'd spend the whole budget on guest performances (Rob Lowe is quite mean and funny. Between that and Parks & Recreation the guy is having a real, and convincing comedic resurgence. Tina Fey is wasted.) and forgot that they'd have to put them in semi-plausible settings, rather than bare cubicles, offices, apartments, and fake-looking restaurants. It was disconcerting, and made me realize what a nice job most movies do in creating plausible worlds. But I can't for the life of me figure out why they skipped that part of the process this time.
On an utterly random note, this is the 1,000th post on this blog. Woah. Thanks for sticking around, y'all.