We Need to Talk About LIAR LIAR

Ha, I actually still love this movie. This will be a fun conversation. I'll be all over this when I have a bit more time.

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Originally Posted by BlackyShimSham 

The plot concerns a scummy, morally reprehensible individual who overcomes his burden of one-day truth-telling in order to separate a loving father from his kids and give all his money to his cheating, floozy wife. He realizes this is wrong exactly one second too late to do anything about it, other than sabotage his own career. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the equivalent of murdering a liquor store clerk and then deciding you don't want to rob the place after all? 

 

Hey now!  He won that trial fair and square!!!  Legally, it was AIRTIGHT JUSTICE!

I haven't seen this movie for years, but aside from the laughable attempts to turn Carrey into some Jimmy Stewart-type figure at the end ("I HOLD MYSELF IN CONTEEEEEMPT!!!"), all I really remember is Carrey's physical antics.  That, and the outtakes.

"OVERACTOR!!!"

"JEZEBE-HAHAHAHAHA!  They're onto me..."

"How much do you weigh?"

"105"

"Yeah....IN YOUR BRA."

I still think Liar Liar is hilarious.

Come on. Liar Liar is still pretty hilarious. And Jim Carrey works his ass off. I can't think of any recent comedian who works physical comedy like he does.

"New in the building?"

"Yes. I just moved in Monday."

"Do you like it so far?"

"Everyone has been real nice."

"Well, that's because you have big jugs. I mean, your boobs are huge. I mean, I wanna squeeze them. Mama!

"The pen is blue. The pen is blue. THE GOD DAMN PEN IS BLUE!"

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Originally Posted by User_32 

"The pen is blue. The pen is blue. THE GOD DAMN PEN IS BLUE!"

 

Doesn't he actually write that all over his face too? So good. This movie had the best use of Jim Carrey's manic energy ever. I especially loved "I'M KICKING MY OWN ASS" as he beats the hell out of himself in the bathroom. Such a go-for-broke performance from Carrey. I don't care what the moral implications of the movie are, the physical and verbal comedy in it was too brilliant for them to matter.

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Originally Posted by BlackyShimSham 

I remember when this movie first came out I thought it was the second coming. Jim Carrey was at the peak of his taking-over-America comedic powers. And as many issues as I have with it, the movie just works. Like gangbusters, in fact. To my young eyes it seemed to be the funniest film ever created. 

 

But man, is this movie gross, or what? I think it could only exist in the vacuum of the pre-9/11 mid-nineties, back when America was utterly naive.

 

The plot concerns a scummy, morally reprehensible individual who overcomes his burden of one-day truth-telling in order to separate a loving father from his kids and give all his money to his cheating, floozy wife. He realizes this is wrong exactly one second too late to do anything about it, other than sabotage his own career. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the equivalent of murdering a liquor store clerk and then deciding you don't want to rob the place after all? 

 

While doing this he accomplishes a number of other tasks, like alienating and humiliating every person he comes into contact with, like his boss whom he fucks and later openly mocks for being a whore (in front of a boardroom full of rich, white, guffawing man), as well as a well-meaning and professional prosecutor (again, a woman), whose trial he turns into a circus and whose client he utterly fucks over. 

 

No act is more disturbing however than his last: he breaks up his ex-wife's relationship with a new man, despite the fact that: 

 

A) The new man, while being a corny milquetoast, is a thousand-percent more of a positive and stable influence on his family's life 

and

B) Carrey's character has repeatedly cheated on the mom and was an absentee father.

 

If you take this story and tell it from the point of view of Cary Elwes' character, it essentially becomes The Last American Virgin.

 

Fuck this movie. 

 

 

 

I seem to recall several female legal partners in the boardroom scene.

Heheheh, I need to see the movie right now.

Yeah, 90's studio comedy kinda pushed the envelope as far questionable sexual material. This movie hasn't aged well, even if it's Carrey at his rubbery best.

Gotta be honest, though - I still crack up thinking of Cary Elwes' painfully lame interpretation of The Claw. What a loser.

Still funny, but I can see the  questionable morality. Though, personally, I found "My Best Friend's Wedding" to be more heinous. Let's root for bitchy Julia Roberts to destroy her male friend's marriage to in-her-prime and super nice Cameron Diaz. Eccch.

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Originally Posted by levrock 

Still funny, but I can see the  questionable morality. Though, personally, I found "My Best Friend's Wedding" to be more heinous. Let's root for bitchy Julia Roberts to destroy her male friend's marriage to in-her-prime and super nice Cameron Diaz. Eccch.

To be fair, I don't think the movie was really ever on her side.

Haha, why am I called out to damn this movie? I'll admit it was a funny, if unnecessary, restoration of the Carrey status quo after the far better Cable Guy (I still use "you stuffed her like a Thanksgiving turkey!" all the time), but it never quite sat with me.

"Wish" movies (ex. Freaky Friday, The Change-Up) bother me, because the main characters always come across as so undeserving of such miraculous intervention. It's A Wonderful Life goes to great pains to show us how great of a man George Bailey is and how far reaching the effects of his life have been, but Liar, Liar (and Bruce Almighty) never convince me that Carrey's character deserves to be taught the error of his ways. He's an asshole, yes, but there are a lot of assholes in the world.

I don't need an explanation for the miracle, but I'd like a reason; will he or his son go on to do great things now that he's a better person?

Also has one of the worst "running to stop a loved one from leaving town" moments, and the kid's mop top haircut is proto-Anakin awfulness. 

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Originally Posted by Bartleby_Scriven 

 

Also has one of the worst "running to stop a loved one from leaving town" moments, and the kid's mop top haircut is proto-Anakin awfulness. 

Yeah but he gets to tell a plane to "pull over" and throws his shoe at it. Post 9/11, it's charming. 

I'd love to see a post-9/11 remake, where Fletcher ends up tackled by Homeland Security, redacted to Burma, and spends the next eight months answering every question with absolute honesty, except they don't believe such a truthful man exists. He's finally deposited back on his family's doorstep, a broken, shattered shell of a man, but still spouting truth from what remaining teeth he has left.

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Originally Posted by BlackyShimSham 

 

I guess I'm just baffled at the filmmakers decision to end the film with Fletcher learning his lesson immediately after ruining the lives of his client's family. Why not just before? It's a weird, ugly decision.

I never worried too much about the lesson portion, as comedies and wish-movies specifically frequently have some weird collateral damage going on that it's best not to dwell on.  What I was more baffled by was how his performance in court managed to impress his bosses.  He does some of the absolute worst lawyer-ing imaginable and devastates his own case to the point that he, and by extension the entire firm, could be sued for malpractice.  And his genius-miracle-game-saving-master-stroke is to stumble onto a basic piece of information that renders the whole trial moot.  Never mind that any competent attorney would have unearthed this nugget months prior to trial and avoided the trial altogether, conventional wisdom in litigation is that if just learn any new info when you're already in front of a judge, you're not doing your job right.

Oh, and they better hope that Fletcher or any of his colleagues ever has to argue another case in front of this judge, who expresses open hostility toward Fletcher that I'm sure will in no way carry over to the firm he represents.  He's a mad genius who won one case on a technicality!   Let's make him mayor!

Yesterday, I watched a bit of this movie after also watching a bit of Legally Blonde.

I've thought this before, but what is it about mainstream Hollywood movies and stern (but wise) black judges?  Elderly black actors don't get too many roles in such movies, but the role of the judge seems to be a pretty reliable one.

http://justenrichment.com/2011/05/16/the-camera-adds-ten-pounds-diversity-to-the-bench/

Actually this is a topic in itself - the Hollywood movie where we are expected to root for the asshole/bitch.   I have bought this up before but in The Devil Wears Prada the main character gets away with cheating on her Boyfriend and still gets a happy ending.

The only example of this type of film I can get behind is Murray in Scrooged.

Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets!

The bigger the asshole, the bigger the arc!

Replace "naive" with "cynical" and this sentence makes a ton more sense, especially in relation to this film.

Good call on everything else though.

I think in As Good As It Gets or Groundhog Day we are supposed to genuinely dislike the main characters at the outset, and grow to like them as things progress.  Liar, Liar doesn't ever really want us to dislike Carrey even when he is at his "worst" (which, as has been pointed out, isn't necessarily where the film things it is).  In he early scenes, he's presented as a loving (if inattentive) father and a loveable sleaze, as opposed to a hilarious sleaze like say, Woody Harrelson in Kingpin.

It's also down to casting an actor the audience already likes and is paying to see. Jim Carrey and Bill Murray we like them already so them being an asshole doesn't really matter. We laugh cause it's like our best friend goofing around. 

It's also how they're presented, though.  Murray is the biggest asshole around at the start of Groundhog Day, but he's funny enough (and Murray's good enough at walking the line of likability) that we can come back around to him later on.

In Liar, Liar on the other hand, Carrey is introduced as a little sleazy, but he's immediately surrounded by the even sleazier boss and client.  Combined with Carrey's natural, non-threatening energy, it makes him seem quirky rather than really repugnant.   Then they quickly introduce the relationship with the son, which is filled with genuine affection even if its flaws are what drives the story, defanging him even further.  Groundhog Day or As Good As It Gets are willing to let you dislike the protagonist for longer stretches, while Liar seems immediately nervous about turning you too far against him.

Looks like Eddie is doing something similar as well.

I used to find Jim Carry very funny, and I recall enjoying this movie back in the day. The last time I saw it was on a bus in 5th or 6th grade when they put it on to keep us occupied during a field trip. They turned it off shortly thereafter because of sexual content. People were frustrated at the time, but now reading over Mr Shimsham's post, I am thinking maybe it was for the best. The movie was never that humorous, and apparently it's politics were kind of repugnant

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Originally Posted by Ken Savage 

Actually this is a topic in itself - the Hollywood movie where we are expected to root for the asshole/bitch.   I have bought this up before but in The Devil Wears Prada the main character gets away with cheating on her Boyfriend and still gets a happy ending.

 

The only example of this type of film I can get behind is Murray in Scrooged.

Because those who fail to adhere to monogamy should be doomed by cinematic law to a life on unhappiness?

I didn't like DWP, but I'm surprised to hear that complaint leveled agianst the film

As for movies with "unlikable" main characters, these in fact may be my favorite sort. The more I think about it, many of my favorite movies feature people who are deeply selfish
 

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Originally Posted by felix 

Looks like Eddie is doing something similar as well.

 

At this point, my only reaction to this is, "It's nice to see a man of his age taking care of his body and his looks like that. Good for him."

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Originally Posted by felix 

Looks like Eddie is doing something similar as well.

 

My God, that looks......good?

Speaking of lead characters teetering on the edge of being relatable, this thread came to mind early in REAL STEEL where Hugh Jackman is willing to sell his son to pay for a new fighting robot. 

Jackman's charm (and the fact that you know where this movie is going) allowed me to overlook how terrible that is.

I don't understand why it would be the better thing for the film to have him learn his lesson before he does something terrible. That's obvious, pandering bullshit. It makes much more sense for him to have the realization in that crushing moment when you realize you've irrevocably fucked something up. That's a character shift I can actually buy. It's usually the case in life that you have to break something before you appreciate and understand it.

EDIT: Jackman selling the kid isn't nearly as terrible as leaving him on the unstable, soaking wet cliff of death to haul a fucking 2,000lb robot up a mud slick.

Agreed on your points about Liar Liar and Real Steal.

We do seem to be side-stepping the fact that Fletcher's morally reprehensible act was upholding the law, causing the kids to live with the woman who gave birth to them. Yes, the film has established she's a shitty human being and the dad is a poe-faced angel, but them's the breaks sometimes. It's not like he realized the err of his ways as he stepped back from the stab-riddled body, staring at the blood on his hands and dropping the knife.

Yeah, there's seems to be an underlying assumption here that divorce attorneys should either drop or actively undermine the cases of their clients if they feel they were at fault in the break up.  That's not how it works. 

Plus, you know, there'll be custody hearings to actually decide who gets them for how long later.  It's not like they hauled Dad out and shot him on the courthouse steps.

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Originally Posted by Renn Brown 

We do seem to be side-stepping the fact that Fletcher's morally reprehensible act was upholding the law, causing the kids to live with the woman who gave birth to them. Yes, the film has established she's a shitty human being and the dad is a poe-faced angel, but them's the breaks sometimes. It's not like he realized the err of his ways as he stepped back from the stab-riddled body, staring at the blood on his hands and dropping the knife.

The dad is a poe-faced angel that apparently had the taste for teenage poontang in the past. It's beyond bizarre to try to reconcile these characters with their supposed backstory.

Most comedies are about assholes being assholes. Nice people are just not very funny.

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Originally Posted by Schwartz 

It's also how they're presented, though.  Murray is the biggest asshole around at the start of Groundhog Day, but he's funny enough (and Murray's good enough at walking the line of likability) that we can come back around to him later on.

 

In Liar, Liar on the other hand, Carrey is introduced as a little sleazy, but he's immediately surrounded by the even sleazier boss and client.  Combined with Carrey's natural, non-threatening energy, it makes him seem quirky rather than really repugnant.   Then they quickly introduce the relationship with the son, which is filled with genuine affection even if its flaws are what drives the story, defanging him even further.  Groundhog Day or As Good As It Gets are willing to let you dislike the protagonist for longer stretches, while Liar seems immediately nervous about turning you too far against him.

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Originally Posted by TCD 

Most comedies are about assholes being assholes. Nice people are just not very funny.

I think here lies the purpose. Carrey is likable as a star, but we also want to see his character/s in awkward slapsticky situations. Fletcher's likable, because we can laugh at his misfortunes. Like a clown (which Carrey is in many of his roles at that time, Ace, Mask, etc), the Schadenfreude builds empathy perhaps?  He's good at being the live-action Wile E Coyote, just doing what comes natural to a lawyer/carnivore. Fletcher is an A-hole, but there is comeuppance in many cases. It's funny to watch him suffer, but also hopeful that even the A-hole in all of us can be redeemed as well. And I don't think he's so reprehensible that he doesn't deserve another chance. He's no worse than Ebenezer Scrooge, is he?

But yeah, Elwes is the token Baxter here. Poor guy.

Sorry to resurrect a semi-old thread, but two nights ago I stumbled upon this movie on cable whilst trying and failing to sleep and watched it for the first time since it originally came out out of basically morbid curiosity. Honestly my opinion of it remains about the same now as it was then: beyond a few of the "moral casualties" that have already been covered pretty well here, my other big issue with the film is the general schmaltzyness of the family scenes with the son in general, which seem to take up way too much of the film's runtime for it to be safely ignorable: I'd almost prefer if Carrey's Fletcher simply had getting his wife back to concern himself with rather than winning his kid over, if only to spare us those beyond painful scenes with "proto-Anakin" as Bartleby nicely put it earlier. All in all its a pretty lousy movie that utterly wastes some of the best physical comedy gags and one liners of Carrey's career ("STOP BREAKIN' THE LAW ASSHOOOOOOLE!!!" is still a keeper). His work here absolutely deserves a much better movie to showcase it.

My other reason however for posting here after reading through this thread is a very simple question that's nagging at me now: what in the atomic powered fucking hell does 9/11 have to do with a single goddamned thing about this movie? I mean maybe, MAYBE other than, as was pointed out, Carrey's fracas at the airport at the end likely causing a fairly bigger shitstorm with the feds now than it would've back then (which in the grand scheme of the film is such a beyond tiny detail at best, and that whole sequence in general was just rancid pap anyhow to begin with). But aside from that, the OP drudging up 9/11 in relation to a featherweight Jim Carrey comedy about a dishonest lawyer whose neglectful of his kid whilst being entangled in a shady divorce case seems like a gargantuan, completely arbitrary ass-pull, along with the continued referencing and name dropping of the incident throughout the discussion in general.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not being prudish about it nor am I speaking out of some misplaced anger or hostility in relation towards anyone ever invoking it for any reason, I'm just genuinely baffled and perplexed as to what the hell the perceived connection is between it and such an inconsequential movie that doesn't touch on a single blessed theme that's even accidentally related to it in hindsight. Minor tweaking to the airport ending notwithstanding, there's really not a damned single thing about this movie otherwise that I could see playing any different post-tragedy compared to pre. The OP implied something or other regarding America being more "naive" back then compared to afterwards (which outside of the average person's general knowledge of middle eastern affairs is otherwise completely full of shit: "cynical" is absolutely the better and far and away more accurate term to use), but once again I fail to grasp what any of that has to do with a movie this fluffy and completely divorced from anything at all even tangentially connected to something that 9/11 had any actual effect on.

I mean are lawyers somehow more or less ethical and honest on average since then? Are divorce litigations among rich people less or more ugly and petty? A change in the ratio of how much or often workaholic dads disappoint their kids? Office politics less or more sexist? Fletcher would've had to kiss more or less ass to make partner? Cary Elwes' portrayal of "the claw" would've somehow been more accurate? I mean seriously and in all honesty, what am I missing here? I don't in any way mean to downplay how horrible or how impacting 9/11 was (especially in a thread dedicated to such a silly, dumb little movie), but mundane shit of that sort seems about more or less precisely the same now as it ever was back in the 90's. And if some of it somehow isn't, I highly doubt the toppling of those buildings and all those senseless deaths from it had much, if anything, to do with any perceived shifts in such matters. I can't help but see any argument to the contrary as being anything other than the textbook definition of "reaching", but I'm still plenty game to listen if someone has a convincing one handy.

Sorry for bringing up such a heavy topic in such an old thread for such an un-heavy film, but when I looked up a thread for it here out of simple curiosity, a topic like 9/11 was about the dead last thing in the world I expected to see get brought up and discussed in relation to this of all movies. Also I'll admit its something of a pet peeve of mine when people blow up the event (which don't get me wrong was, duh, obviously indeed fucking hideous and changed a LOT of aspects of our culture) as having basically uprooted and turned inside out the entire fabric of existence itself to the point where every single possible topic that could conceivably come up warrants some sort of vague, nebulous comparison to the ways that even the tiniest and most microscopic of details in the minutia of day to day society were pre and post-9/11. In a way it gives the people behind the attack entirely too much fucking credit.

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It think saying that it either “shocked” or “awed” me is perhaps overstating my reaction by more than just a shade. It was more like it simply made me cock an eyebrow and mutter under my breath “...the fuck?”

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And with all the possible respect in the world I can possibly muster, I find going out of one's way to read such changes into every possible tiny little detail of existence so to be pretty damned stupid and taking the cultural analysis of pre and post-9/11 America to some pretty comically overboard extremes; at worst sort of in roughly the same ballpark as grasping at straws to finding links to the JFK assassination in every possible little nook and cranny of Americana.

Er... not that I mean to call you a conspiracy nut or anything, since I know you certainly weren't going there. Maybe more like an, I dunno... cultural/mass public psychology over-analysis nut? If such a thing exists?

In talking about the effects of 9/11 on America, when its related to stuff like say... post-2001 political and socioeconomic discourse, then sure by all means go nuts with it obviously. In looking at the overall cultural attitude and “mood” of the American public in the years following the event, of course why not? Certainly more than relevant enough, and there've by all means plenty of films/TV shows/other assorted media that have been made which totally reflect these changes in attitudes and cultural mores.

But when one finds oneself dragging the question of “Now how could 9/11 have affected this?” into even subjects like mediocre/forgettable family comedies made years and years way the hell before anything in the cultural landscape even remotely quasi-related to the event had occurred (aside from perhaps the eerie foreshadowing that was the 1993 WTC bombing that just barely missed happening under the first Bush's watch)... that might be about the point where one should maybe take a deep breath as well as a step or two back and come to grips with the possibility that one might've taken to looking at the wide reaching impact of the tragedy perhaps just a wee bit too far.

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I think it's probably fair to say that said “je ne sais quoi” in this particular instance is more than likely largely in your head. I mean not to be a dick about it but... its fucking Liar Liar for Christ's sake. We're talking about a movie so devoid substance that the entire fabric of the film's plot hinges on a kid's fucking birthday wish actually, literally manifesting itself in reality via forcibly altering a man's personality to exacting specifics (complete with a set of rules and an internal logic created from pure nothingness) for exactly 24 hours on the nose because... fuck-a-doodle-doo. The kid's just that damned “cute and innocent” that the fabric of reality just bends to his every whim I suppose.

Not that I would at all want or expect some impossibly stupid and contrived "wish mythology" cooked up to eat up runtime via boringly over-explaining how this shit got magicked into existence in the first place (lord knows that's very likely exactly something that WOULD be done were this film to be remade today: and god knows looking at the current cinema landscape, that's probably not all that far fetched a possibility at this point). More like the inherent concept is so profoundly stupid that its broken to its very core and needed to be rethought or re-approached completely from scratch (though admittedly its a thin line and much of it has to do with that fucking kid and all his "precocious power of innocence" bullshit: see Groundhog Day for how you do this type of "magic wish/gimmick" film not only well, but fucking masterfully and intelligently).

But no matter. On a chain of logic dictating we drag in 9/11 even when discussing formulaic family schmaltz comedies like this, you might as well make a 9/11 comparison with the Fred Savage/Judge Reinhold opus Vice Versa while you're at it, for all the tangible connective tissue you'd have to work with (i.e. none). Hell, lets wax on possible Patriot Act foreshadowing in the piece of Schwarzenegger/Sinbad avant garde known as Jingle All the Way. And I'm sure there's a stellar, hard hitting piece just waiting to be written analyzing the arthouse classic Angels in the Outfield which speculates on the possible hidden connotations between the kid in that movie's literalization of his father's offhanded baseball metaphor and the child-like naivete of of the Bush administration thinking that going into Iraq would somehow magically solve all our foreign affairs issues post-9/11 attacks.... or something like that because yeah 9/11 like changed everything man.

With Liar Liar, we're wandering within a realm of insipid family film inanity maybe just a small, microscopic step or two higher than that of any of the sappy, hackneyed garbage listed above (and that step or two is 100% predicated on 90's-top-of-the-world Jim Carrey's totally committed physical performance and a few semi-clever/snappy bits of dialogue here and there, but that's entirely beside the point). I think that even those most mired and wallowed in the deepest corners of post-9/11 American popculture would find a comparison between a film like this and anything that had anything to do with anything that followed in our corner of the world after the towers fell to be substantiated by... well a whole lot of nothing really, other than an overzealous desire to retroactively project a sense of prescience regarding a major line-in-the-sand moment in our nation's zeitgeist (that's more than over-fixated on enough as it is already) onto even the stupidest and most thoroughly unsubstantial possible detritus of popculture's past.

Again not trying to be a complete prick here, just pointing out the total absurdity and the arbitrary out-of-fucking-nowhere-ness of the comparison.