M O V I E S
![[Stable guy]](carrey970321.gif)
"Liar, Liar," Jim Carrey's attempt at humor with a heart,
won't be setting anyone's pants on fire.
- - - - - - - - BY CHARLES TAYLOR - - - - - - - - Liar Liar
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Carrey's done a good job of working out that premise in physical terms. In the opening scenes, taking long-legged, arm-swinging strides through his offices, greeting every co-worker he meets with the sort of patently false glad-handing that's so hearty it dares you to disbelieve it, Carrey is like every b.s. artist you've ever been stuck talking to in the men's room or at the water cooler. When the 24-hour truth curse comes over him, Carrey turns it into a mind-body conflict. He tries to keep the truth from bursting out like a man leaning against a crumbling dam in a flood: His eyes roll back in his head, his neck contorts itself in boa-constrictor-like loops, his mouth flaps soundlessly as if he were a stuttering mute. Watching Carrey slink out of court after a disastrous session, clutching his briefcase to his chest and hunched over as if he were Quasimodo, I kept hearing the bit from Lenny Bruce's famous Carnegie Hall concert where, in a horror-movie voice, he hisses, "I've done a cursed thing. I am different now." The moviemakers -- Tom Shadyac ("The Nutty Professor"), the director, and Paul Guay and Stephen Mazur, the screenwriters -- make a smart move turning Carrey's truth-telling from a virtue into an excuse for rude comedy. (When Cooper, an insufferably adorable tyke, tells Carrey, "Teacher says true beauty is on the inside," Carrey brings down the house by replying, "That's just something ugly people say.") And they provide a neat twist by enabling Carrey to win his client's case without lying. But they're not smart enough, and the low laughs give way to Carrey's realization that he hasn't been a good father or a good lawyer. (I sympathize with much of the public's anger toward lawyers, and I understand that this is a comedy, but the movie plays into the adolescent refusal to realize that there's a considerable difference between lying and acting as your client's advocate.) Carrey managed to be sympathetic in "The Mask" without descending into the gooey bathos he does here. The most enjoyable thing about his movies has been precisely that the manic glint in his eyes makes him look entirely untrustworthy. Even if he weren't playing nice here, there'd be a bigger problem. Carrey's directors have always been content to let him be the whole show, and with a performer as manic as he is, the result is simply exhausting. In "Liar Liar," Jennifer Tilly gets laughs just by walking into a scene. With her dye job and her tight, low-cut suits, she's an invitingly amoral little partridge. But as the lawyer who is Carrey's opponent, Swoosie Kurtz has next to no material, and though Cary Elwes, as the man who wants to marry Carrey's ex, tries to pull off a parody of a decent trustworthy bore, he sinks in the role. ("Isn't Ralph Bellamy looking well?" the wag next to me asked.) Carey needs second bananas. "Dumb and Dumber" is his most satisfying movie because of the imbecilic duets he got to do with Jeff Daniels (and because the two of them got to bounce off Lauren Holly's double takes).
Probably the worst thing about "Liar Liar" is that if it's a hit (and it probably will be), it's going to give credence to the view that the public rejected "The Cable Guy" because it was too "dark." But that's almost always said when a not-very-good black comedy tanks at the box office. (Remember "Neighbors," with Aykroyd and Belushi?) "The Cable Guy" didn't work because, narratively, it made next to no sense. What's mildly alarming about "Liar Liar" is that Carrey seems to be apologizing for the slobby, childish humor that made him amusing in the first place. It's the sensitive guy Carrey who's the real con artist here.
Charles Taylor is a regular contributor to Salon. P R E V I O U S R E V I E W S "Smilla's Sense of Snow" By Robin Dougherty (03/14/97)
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