Darning with faint praise

Rating: Null/10 (23 March 2004)

"Liar Liar" is an example of what happens when great comedy goes good--it gets ignored. Liar Liar is a good-hearted comedy that nobody seems to take too seriously. Sure, it's very funny, but if nobody's feelings get hurt (apart from trial lawyers) it can't be "great" comedy, can it? Did anyone mention that this is Jim Carrey's funniest performance on film? Okay--I will.
In Liar Liar Jim Carrey plays a lawyer who is a compulsive liar, which makes him an attorney with a bright future. When the lying spills into his personal life, his son Max makes a birthday wish that for just one day his father will be unable to speak a lie.

The wish comes true, and Jim Carrey delivers a career-topping performance as a scheming lawyer who craves the chance to lie but just can't get the words out of his mouth. Watching Carrey contort and fume in the angst of a jerk who would rather bash his own head in than tell the truth, you see an early Jerry Lewis, the deft interplay of soulfulness and belly laughs. Carrey's character is not a clown or buffoon, he's a real guy who's let his own ego run away with him. And his comeupance isn't a public pillorying, it's just an hilarious struggle between good and evil within the tortured soul of a trial lawyer. And since it's Jim Carrey, there's plenty of yuk-yuks.

Jim Carrey's choices of roles show that he desires to be taken seriously as an actor. Very well, but let's not forget to take him seriously as a comedian, the greatest of our time. Liar Liar shows Carrey's performing at his wackiest and most tenderly felt.