You’d think that a movie starring Ricky Gervais, and bringing in a whole slew of comic figures would make a rollicking laugh riot of a movie.  Jonah Hill, Louis C.K., Tina Fey, Jason Bateman, even John Hodgman, for crying out loud–they’re all in The Invention of Lying, and yet, I found myself incredibly bored.

Warner Brothers sent me a copy of this one, so I set out to see what this movie had to offer.  What I got was a great idea that was just too brutally honest.

In The Invention of Lying, it posits a universe in which mankind never learned how to lie.  There is no flattery, no deceit, no fiction.  All entertainment is now a giant offshoot of the History Channel.  Everyone says exactly what they’re thinking, whether you should hear it or not.  And then, one day, Mark Bellison, a chubby loser who’s about to get fired from his go-nowhere job, discovers that, in this world, if you can tell a lie, you are king.

Thus, he learns how to do it, and parlays this newfound gift for deceit into a vast financial empire, which he uses in an attempt to hook up with Jennifer Garner, who has an almost Hitler-esque fascination with genetics and producing beautiful babies.

But when Mark uses his new gift to comfort his dying mother with tales of the afterlife, it all goes entirely too far, and he’ll have to learn a little something about the truth to get it all back on track.

See what I mean?  It sounds hilarious. It’s got great funny folks in the cast.  But somehow, it’s just kind of a dull snooze of a movie.  I didn’t laugh very often, nor did I enjoy what I watched.  The jokes fell flat for me, and I was getting royally sick of Ricky Gervais by the time it was all said and done.

I didn’t enjoy this movie much, and that disappoints me.  It’s a great idea, but it just didn’t fly.

Thus, the Screenhead Ten Scale gives The Invention of Lying, this pile of misfired jokes, a four out of ten for being a great idea that just couldn’t hold interest.