Liar, Liar

Remember when Jim Carrey was funny?

...

Me, neither.  But there was a point in time when making weird faces was all it took to be considered funny, and Jim Carrey was all over that.  Liar Liar was but one movie made during this time to cash in on these unique, er, comedy stylings.

Naturally, during its life time, it was received well (as anything Jim Carrey was prone to be).  But how good is Liar, Liar really?  Let's break those rose coloured, nostalgia filtering glasses and take a look.  It's an old movie, so i'm gonna just give away the plot wholesale.

The premise is that Jim Carrey plays an unscrupulous lawyer and neglectful father who gets out of anything and everything buy lying his ass off.  From his $900 suit to his mercedes benz, it would seem lying pays pretty well!

Well, except that his family life has fallen apart.  He's divorced and his kid kinda doesn't like him (but of course loves him).

The other fallout from Jim Carrey's perpetual lying is his ex-wife (Maura Tierney) starts to threaten moving across the country to live with her new boyfriend and their (Jim Carrey and her's) son.  This, of course, would deny Carrey custody, so he's heartbroken.


Of course, this is hollywood, so even though we know Jim Carrey and his fictional wife's life together has already fallen apart once, all will be forgiven by the end of the movie and the 3 will form a "happily-every-after" family.  This will also leave Maura Tierney's new boyfriend SOL (s*** outta luck), so we try not to form any strong opinions of him or attachments to his character.  The film helps by not giving him any character to begin with.
Anyway, after missing one too many of his son's birthday parties (because he's banging the office slut), his son wishes that his father couldn't lie for at least 24 hours.

Miraculously, but not unexpectedly, the wish comes true.  This is not good news for Jim Carrey.  After all, his job, relationships and indeed his entire life seems to be based on a foundation of lies!  Without the ability to lie, surely everything will fall apart around him.

Hmm... i think there's a moral hidden in this movie somewhere, but i'm not quite sure what it is.

Now, i'm not going to walk through the rest of the plot.  It's pretty self evident and mostly it's just various scenes of Jim Carrey being Jim Carrey.  Some of them are funny, but most of them are wacky (without any good or bad connotations to go along with that).

The weird thing is how readily some people accept that Jim Carrey cannot lie now.  Yes, some of them are completely doubtful at first (like his secretary), but she still sort of accepts that a birthday wish made her boss suddenly unable to lie.  I mean, think about it: if someone you knew told you that they couldn't lie and started acting like they couldn't (telling you all the offensive things they think of you 'cause they cannot lie to you anymore), would you believe them?  Or would you just go "yeah, ok, buddy.  I'll see you later." and never call them again?

The one thing about Jim Carrey's "curse" that always seemed weird to me is the extent his inability to lie is stretched.  At one point he's arguing with his ex-wife about her plan to move away with his son.  In a fit of passion he tries to say that he's a good father, but evidently that would be a lie, so instead he yells "i'm a bad father!"  This provokes his ex-wife to deny this claim (foreshadowing their eventual reconciliation), but there's more wrong with this than meets the eye.

Firstly, when Jim Carrey says this "truth", it's important to note that even Jim Carrey is surprised.  Apparently, even if Jim Carrey honestly believes what he is saying is true, the magic of the wish (*shrug*?) prevents him from saying something that is a lie and automatically corrects it to the truthful counterpart.

Now, if this is actually the case, why doesn't Jim Carrey try to do something miraculous with his abilities?  And i don't mean run-of-the-mill, miraculous, like walking on water (we call it "ice", folks!) but something truly awe-inspiringly miraculous:

"The best treatment for cancer is to let it run its course."  Try saying that, Carrey.  You'll quickly either prove that to be the horrible truth of reality, or gift mankind with a cure for cancer out of sheer obfuscating stupidity.

Cancer not your bag?  How about, "The solution to world hunger is to let people starve."  Or let's just jump into philosophy.  Put to bed all the anxiety of the religious wars: "The one true god is...".

Ok, that last one probably wouldn't help anyone.  Even if he does say the truth, no one will believe him.  But you could still make a tone of money gambling ("The next card is a 4 of diamonds!") and use that money for charitable goods (if not for yourself).  Be creative!

At any rate, the only problems with being unable to lie (to this ridiculous extent) seem to be for Jim Carrey's very narrowly defined world.  Which is good for comedy in the movie, but bad for the reasoning behind it.  Oh well, it's fiction, right?  I'm probably one of the very few who ever even thought of this.

Anyways, the movie ends as expected, even predicted (see earlier).  Jim Carrey and Maura Tierney end up back together with their son.   Carrey learns a lesson about "being truthful" and we never hear from Maura Tierney's movie boyfriend ever again (and no one cares).

All in all, i can't say Liar, Liar is outright bad, but it's certainly a little too cliched to be good.  The humour is almost entirely in Jim Carrey's facial contortions and slapstick, but there's also some verbal humour thrown in for good measure.  I laughed a few times.

I give this movie 5 out of 5 stars!

Actually, i'm lying.  It only gets 3 and a half out of five.  That's a B.