Review of Liar Liar (1997) by Parker M — 13 May 2011

2.5 Stars out of 4.

A comedy about a lawyer and his son is a premise I should embrace. My dad is a lawyer so I should be first in line to praise Liar Liar. But I didn't quite.

It does not feel true to heart. What director Tom Shadyac (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective) has done is put Jim Carrey in a character who could never, ever have such a vocation. I could believe though he was a pet detective. I guess that is the absurdity of Liar Liar: an eccentric and dishonest lawyer, who rarely acts like one, must spend one day being a truth talker. Uh oh.

What immediately saves Liar Liar is the comedic icon himself: Jim Carrey. This is a comedic master who will throw himself in the midst of battle and take any bullet, whether that be the script, the lack of strong supporting performances, or the heavy-handed plot. Carrey does anything for a laugh, and I mean anything. He smacks a toilet seat against his head, makes an idiot of himself in the courtroom, and sexually harasses others. But it's somehow funny.

The plot is so laughably contrived you just have to go with it. Nothing occurs naturally. What the script implies is that Carrey's character has essentially 86 minutes to get his act together. That man is attorney Fletcher Reede who is such a pathological lawyer it is no wonder he is divorced. His ex-wife, Audrey (Maura Tierney), is enchanted by Fletcher at one minute and when the plot says so, equally appalled. Their young son, Max (Justin Cooper), shows similar feelings. When he first sees his father he is so unabashedly amused by him. Seconds later he cries and is peeved by his father's irresponsible ways. So on Max's birthday when daddy doesn't show up, he makes a wish his dad will not lie for one day. Fair enough.

Carrey is not playing a likeable character but his personality is irresistible. I mean, how could one like a man who sleeps with his promiscuous associate instead of attending his son's birthday be worth our time or sympathy? Yet Jim Carrey makes hopeless material work. His energy is forgivable, in which the characters sit back and just let him take the material to another level (though Anne Haney from Mrs. Doubtfire has her moments as Reede's secretary).

What Liar Liar relies on is its premise. How funny will it be (and for how long) for a lawyer to have to tell the truth for a whole day? The film's ideas for comedy are not exactly inventive. They're pretty cliché. What I mean is each joke is dipped in irony. Carrey will say or do the opposite thing a lawyer would never say. He objects to himself in the courtroom, cannot manipulate the judge, and he even attacks his own witness. The material is predictable but nonetheless Carrey shines.

What Shadyac never does is find a heart. The story is not designed, and here is its greatest (but not fatal) flaw, to show that Reede is a better person by his son's wish. When the film's conclusion arrives Max and Audrey, who are being pressured by her boyfriend Jerry (Carl Elwes) to move to Boston, make such a rash choice about Reede (which I won't spoil) that the film loses an important bit to its story. In a way, Reede gets everything that he wants in the end. Basically, him reluctantly telling the truth gave him everything he wanted. There is no sense that Reede did this for his son, which turns the film into a charade, and only that.

If there is a reason to see Liar Liar it is for Jim Carrey. His physical comedy is so inventive. He plays off others' personalities and turns them into his own exaggerated ones. Carrey has a talent in making cruel characters hilarious and likeable. I just wish the film treated that cruelty accordingly. What Liar Liar only says is that the truth does not hurt, but it somehow helps.

Note: the film ends with a montage of bloopers. All of them centre on Carrey. This proves Liar Liar is not about a lawyer but about an actor's personality.