Sweet little lies
We saw The Invention of Lying last night (I still want to see The Informant!, in part to see whether I agree with my parents' assessment, which was, essentially: Pbbbbbbbbbbbbbttt!!), which I thought was good, but not great. The premise was much better than the execution; it got a little tedious, but it was a clever movie, with lots of great people in it (I hadn't realized that Edward Norton is in it -- I so enjoy him, for some reason).
I loved that the movie existed basically in today's world; it was intriguing to imagine that Craigslist and Hollywood agents and banks and the real estate market could exist in a world where everyone tells the whole truth, all the time, not necessarily because they're good, but because they don't have the capacity to lie, or a framework for lying. I enjoyed how Ricky Gervais's character struggled with the language of lying; he couldn't say he had told a lie, or hadn't told the truth, or had been dishonest, because those concepts didn't exist. He just said something that...wasn't.
[Minor spoilers ahead (nothing that ruins the ending).]
Where the movie lost its truth, to me, was when Jennifer Garner shows up to Ricky's house, and she basically says she hasn't been touch because she's been really busy and stuff. Which isn't the whole truth, at all. So I thought that that would be like the moment in Pleasantville when some of the characters are starting to see color -- I thought that people were starting to be able to lie to protect each other's feelings, or to make themselves look better. But no, that wasn't it at all. I think it was just a bit of lazy writing, and it didn't fit at all. And yes, obviously, I can suspend my disbelief in general, but when something doesn't make sense because the writers or editors have lost steam, that bothers me much more than when something is just preposterous. And, by that point, I was feeling the movie on the whole was losing steam -- it felt draggy in parts, and it could've been 20 minutes shorter, probably (maybe only 15, but I desperately had to pee with 20 minutes to go, so I'm sticking with 20).
Before the movie, we stopped at Harry & David's for free samples, but I got sucked into buying a package of Caramel Apple Moose Munch. Which was absurdly overpriced, and way too sweet, and gave me a little bit of a stomachache (I went into moderate detox mode after eating entirely too many sweets at the end of the summer through the week after my birthday, so I hadn't had chocolate in about three weeks before the Moose Munch, and had generally eased up on the sugar for the same amount of time, so I think it was a shock to my system, the Moose Munch), but it was still worth it, just to have a few bites. (Geez, I sound like Minnarice. Sorry.)
And, finally, on an unrelated note: it's October, which means it's Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and Down Syndrome Awareness Month, and the Tomato Nation/Donors Choose challenge. Even better? You can donate to projects that help students with Down Syndrome through Donors Choose, so it's a two-fer. Go, please!
I loved that the movie existed basically in today's world; it was intriguing to imagine that Craigslist and Hollywood agents and banks and the real estate market could exist in a world where everyone tells the whole truth, all the time, not necessarily because they're good, but because they don't have the capacity to lie, or a framework for lying. I enjoyed how Ricky Gervais's character struggled with the language of lying; he couldn't say he had told a lie, or hadn't told the truth, or had been dishonest, because those concepts didn't exist. He just said something that...wasn't.
[Minor spoilers ahead (nothing that ruins the ending).]
Where the movie lost its truth, to me, was when Jennifer Garner shows up to Ricky's house, and she basically says she hasn't been touch because she's been really busy and stuff. Which isn't the whole truth, at all. So I thought that that would be like the moment in Pleasantville when some of the characters are starting to see color -- I thought that people were starting to be able to lie to protect each other's feelings, or to make themselves look better. But no, that wasn't it at all. I think it was just a bit of lazy writing, and it didn't fit at all. And yes, obviously, I can suspend my disbelief in general, but when something doesn't make sense because the writers or editors have lost steam, that bothers me much more than when something is just preposterous. And, by that point, I was feeling the movie on the whole was losing steam -- it felt draggy in parts, and it could've been 20 minutes shorter, probably (maybe only 15, but I desperately had to pee with 20 minutes to go, so I'm sticking with 20).
Before the movie, we stopped at Harry & David's for free samples, but I got sucked into buying a package of Caramel Apple Moose Munch. Which was absurdly overpriced, and way too sweet, and gave me a little bit of a stomachache (I went into moderate detox mode after eating entirely too many sweets at the end of the summer through the week after my birthday, so I hadn't had chocolate in about three weeks before the Moose Munch, and had generally eased up on the sugar for the same amount of time, so I think it was a shock to my system, the Moose Munch), but it was still worth it, just to have a few bites. (Geez, I sound like Minnarice. Sorry.)
And, finally, on an unrelated note: it's October, which means it's Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and Down Syndrome Awareness Month, and the Tomato Nation/Donors Choose challenge. Even better? You can donate to projects that help students with Down Syndrome through Donors Choose, so it's a two-fer. Go, please!
