Invention of Lying, The

Plot Summary

Mark Bellison (Gervais) lives in a world in which no one has ever told a lie. He is short and chubby, and because everyone tells only the truth, people do not hesitate to remind him of his shortcomings. When he goes on a blind date with Anna (Jennifer Garner), she informs him that she is unimpressed with his lack of money and attractiveness and that she is out with him only as a favor to a friend. Some may find this brutal honesty refreshing, but others could see the benefits of white lies or chosen moments of silence.

Mark works as a screenwriter for a film studio. However, fiction does not exist because there is no lying, so all films are dull historical lectures. Mark is soon fired and he goes to the bank to pay his rent. The computers are down when the teller asks him how much is in his account. Mark says he has $800, the first lie ever told. When the computer reboots and shows that he has only $300, the teller presumes it must be a computer error. This lie to pay his rent leads to more lies: Mark gets a friend out of a driving-under-the influence (DUI) charge, wins a casino jackpot, and tells a woman that the world will end unless they have sex. He also pens the first fiction, adding aliens into his historical screenplay. The surprising film is a wild success and no one has reason to doubt Mark's veracity. Now rich and famous from his lying, Mark asks Anna out on another date. While happy for his success, she still expresses concern that his poor genes will give them undesirable “little fat kids with snub noses.”

Mark's mother suffers a heart attack. She is petrified of death, so to console her Mark tells her that, after she dies, she will be with all the people she loves, feel no pain, and have her own mansion. The staff overhears Mark's depiction of a heaven and people soon flock to him to learn more about the afterlife. To appease everyone, Mark, serving as a variant of the biblical Moses, creates a biblical story of a “Man in the Sky” God figure and presents 10 rules to live by. Still, while Mark single-handedly creates religion through his lies, he refuses to deceive Anna into marrying him instead of his rival Brad (Rob Lowe), and Anna almost marries Brad but does not.

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