{"id":1290,"date":"2009-10-19T22:53:09","date_gmt":"2009-10-20T04:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.delirium.org\/?p=1290"},"modified":"2021-11-07T16:42:46","modified_gmt":"2021-11-07T22:42:46","slug":"the-invention-of-lying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/?p=1290","title":{"rendered":"The Invention of Lying"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I know that October isn\u2019t really the right time of year to watch comedies. I mean, it\u2019s really a pretty straightforward process. October and February are for horror, November is for family movies and James Bond, December is for OMG-Drama, spring (and September? I\u2019m not entirely sure where September fits) are for comedy, summer is for action blockbusters, and January is for movies that honestly shouldn\u2019t ought to have been released. But, okay, Hollywood doesn\u2019t always do the right thing, and also sometimes I am in the company of people who have an aversion to this or that type of movie. In this instance, despite there being a couple-few horror movies left for me to catch up on for the month, I ended up seeing\u00a0The Invention of Lying<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Imagine, if you can, a world in which humans never learned how to lie. I mean, not about anything. They don\u2019t even have that polite society filter that keeps them from saying whatever crosses their minds. And Ricky Gervais is one of this world\u2019s losers, near the bottom of the genetic lottery, and almost out of job prospects despite talent, because of nothing more than unfortunate luck. And in this moment of disaster, a neuron fires in a way that has never happened before, and he, y\u2019know, invents lying. Next thing you know, he has achieved fiction\u00a0and <\/em>religion, not to mention a ton of cash, yet despite all his efforts, he cannot win what he wants most of all: the love of Jennifer Garner. The rest, well, romantic comedy, I guess? Will he learn a valuable lesson, will it come too late, etc.<\/p>\n

And you know, it was funny, and it was sweet, just as you\u2019d expect. It was even funny for a regular funny movie, so quite a bit moreso than the usual romantic comedy. (It may have been sweeter than usual too, but as I had been rendered tipsy earlier in the evening, I do not fully trust my opinion on that matter.) The one thing I didn\u2019t like was the religious angle, because it seemed, well, a little cruel. I mean, in the movie it wasn\u2019t at all, but there was still this underlying snicker, like even though Ricky Gervais isn\u2019t a jerk, probably whoever invented religion the first time was. And I figure that as many good religious people as there are, it didn\u2019t\u00a0have<\/em> to be that way at the start. My headspace on this point may be all jumbled, I admit. It\u2019s not like I disagree with the underlying point at all, I just don\u2019t think it needed to be mean. So, there\u2019s that?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know that October isn\u2019t really the right time of year to watch comedies. I mean, it\u2019s really a pretty straightforward process. October and February are for horror, November is for family movies and James Bond, December is for OMG-Drama, spring (and September? I\u2019m not entirely sure where September fits) are for comedy, summer is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[420,51],"class_list":["post-1290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","tag-comedy","tag-romantic-comedy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1290"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7782,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290\/revisions\/7782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}