The True Heart of ‘Liar, Liar’

A gag needs a soul.

Liar, Liar features a brilliant concept: A dishonest attorney loses the ability to lie for 24 hours.

Even polite white lies are off-limits. Silence isn’t an option either. If someone asks him a question, he must respond with the unfiltered truth. It’s like reverse telepathy—a habitual liar is forced to expose his thoughts to the world.

There’s plenty of humor baked into this idea, especially with Jim Carrey in the starring role. The script could have zeroed in on the gag, stretched it out to its breaking point, and relied on Carrey to do all the heavy lifting, and that might have sufficed for a fun but forgettable romp.

But high concepts and clever gags work best when they serve an actual story. Fortunately, screenwriters Paul Guay and Stephen Mazur give us one.

Carrey plays Fletcher Reede, who isn’t just a dishonest attorney—he’s a divorced dad who keeps disappointing his five-year-old son, Max (Justin Cooper). Max adores his father, which makes each broken promise all the more devastating, leading to an unorthodox birthday wish. The boy wishes that his dad can’t tell a lie for just one day. And that day begins right when he blows out the candles.

We never learn why the wish comes true, and that’s fine. The magical mechanics aren’t important and would only distract from the story. Max has a reason to make the wish, and that’s all that matters. We simply need to suspend disbelief for this single instance of magic. A similar approach worked for Groundhog Day, and it works here too.

The enforced radical honesty quickly gets Fletcher in trouble. He violates the norms of polite conversation with his honest but socially unacceptable comments. And the whole time, he’s fighting against himself. That’s the real treat of Carrey’s performance. The humor comes not only from the blunt truth but also from Fletcher’s futile efforts to resist it.

Early on, he attempts to tell a simple lie in the privacy of his office. He tries to say that a blue pen is red. He tries to write it. He can’t do either. But he keeps trying. The scene escalates into a battle of man vs. pen (but really versus himself), and it’s a battle the man loses. While we’re enjoying Carrey’s physical comedy, the movie establishes an important point: The wish also prevents Fletcher from lying to himself.

Knowing that he truly believes every word that comes out of his mouth, Fletcher comes to some realizations about himself. When he calls himself a bad father, it hits him hard because he can’t dismiss it as venting in a moment of frustration—deep down, he knows he’s been a bad father. And he realizes how much he wants to redeem himself.

There is, naturally, a ticking clock to heighten the tension. Fletcher’s ex-wife Audrey (Maura Tierney) has a new boyfriend, a well-intentioned but boring nice guy named Jerry (Cary Elwes—yes, the Dread Pirate Roberts himself, though he’s anything but swashbuckling here). Jerry asks Audrey to move across the country with him, and she’s starting to think that might be best for Max. Fletcher has one last chance to prove himself before he loses his son.

Carrey hams it up throughout the movie, but he tempers himself a bit compared to earlier roles (Ace Ventura, Batman Forever, etc.). In this movie, he’s playing a person, not a cartoon. Okay, so he’s still borderline-cartoon at times, but when Fletcher says he loves his son—and realizes that he genuinely means it—he becomes a real man.

That’s what it’s really all about—a guy who wants to do better but keeps getting in his own way. This gives the gag its soul, and it makes Liar, Liar worth another watch all these years later.