Settle down Jim

Rating: 6/10 (27 June 2010)

In Liar Liar you get pretty much everything you would expect in a Jim Carrey comedy. You've got your physical humor, your screaming and shouting and, of course, you've got lots of mugging for the camera. Carrey never met a camera he couldn't make a funny face into. In some of his movies all of this Carrey being Carrey stuff works perfectly. This movie however leaves you wishing he could have dialed things down a few notches. There are moments here where the typical Carrey zaniness works. But there are more moments where Carrey's outlandishness overwhelms the story. Which is too bad because unlike some of his other movies where the outlandishness was the whole point this movie actually has a story you can really appreciate. The movie is actually rather charming but you get the sense it would have been even more so if only Carrey could have reined himself in a bit. You just wish that Carrey and director Tom Shadyac had trusted their story a little bit more and let the story carry the movie. Instead this becomes just another typical Jim Carrey movie. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with typical Jim Carrey movies. It's just that this one had the potential to be something a little different and a little better than that.
In this movie Carrey plays lawyer Fletcher Reede, a man very focused on his career. And certainly not nearly as focused as he should be on his young son Max. Fletcher is separated from Max's mom and whenever he sees his son it seems all he does is make promises he can't or won't keep. And then comes the fateful day when Max, upset that Fletcher has failed to show up for his birthday party, makes a wish that his dad could not tell a lie for an entire day. And when that wish immediately comes true the consequences for Fletcher are immediate. Having to tell the truth all the time can really get a guy into trouble. Not to mention make it rather difficult to do your job when you're a lawyer whose whole case is one giant fabrication. Hilarity ensues. All that Carrey being Carrey stuff. Some of that stuff is admittedly quite good but some of it does miss the mark. There's a great story in there about Fletcher trying to reconnect with his son but too often that story gets lost amidst all the Carrey shenanigans. Carrey overshadows everyone and everything else in the movie. Which is too bad. Yes, you know Carrey's the star of the movie. And yes, you know Carrey's going to do all the things which made him a star in the first place. But this movie called for a little less wackiness, a more grounded performance. Here Carrey had a good story and a couple of other really good performers, most notably Maura Tierney playing Fletcher's ex-wife, to work with. But he just couldn't help himself. Jim Carrey was going to be Jim Carrey, with all the contortions and overacting and relentless mugging that entails. And in the end, despite all its potential, that makes this just another Jim Carrey movie.