Liar Liar (1997)

A Birthday Wish

I’ve watched Liar Liar once, and I tried to watch it a second time. It didn’t survive the second viewing, and that’s true of most Jim Carrey movies for me. The first time through, though, it’s very funny.

Fletcher Reede is a Los Angeles defense lawyer, and he lies for a living. He lies to judges, to juries, to his bosses and, worst of all, to his five-year-old son, Max, promising to come to his baseball games and his birthday party and then never showing up. He’s charming, selfish, slippery and very, very good at his job.

When Fletcher misses Max’s birthday party to sleep with his boss and further his career, Max blows out his candles and wishes that, for one day, his dad couldn’t lie. The wish comes true. The next morning, Fletcher can’t say anything that isn’t true. Not to his boss, not to his clients, not to a traffic cop, not to anyone.

Unfortunately, today’s the day he’s defending Samantha Cole, a gold-digging client in a messy divorce, and winning her case will require him to lie through his teeth.

Jim Carrey

This is Carrey at the peak of his rubber-faced powers, a year before The Truman Show proved he could act, and he’s astonishing. He contorts his face, his voice and his entire body as he fights his own mouth, trying desperately to lie and failing every time. He gags, twitches, chokes and squeaks, his words bursting out of him against his will.

The famous scene where he tries to write the pen is red while holding a blue pen, and can’t make his hand do it, is pure physical comedy. So is the scene in the courthouse bathroom, where he beats himself up, literally, to get a delay in the trial, smashing his own head into a urinal and dragging himself across the floor.

It’s a manic, exhausting, very funny performance, and nobody else alive in 1997 could have pulled it off. Carrey had been doing this kind of thing since In Living Color, and here he’s at full throttle.

Carrey’s Run

By 1997, Jim Carrey was the biggest comedy star in the world. In 1994 alone, he’d released Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask and Dumb and Dumber, three huge hits in a single year. Then came Batman Forever, the Ace Ventura sequel and The Cable Guy, a darker comedy that disappointed audiences and made studios nervous.

Liar Liar was a return to what audiences wanted from him, and it was a massive success. It also showed a glimpse of what came next. The father-son scenes let Carrey play something close to real emotion, and a year later he’d prove in The Truman Show that he could carry a serious film. Liar Liar sits right on the hinge between the two careers.

The Magic Wish

The premise belongs to a familiar family-comedy tradition: a child’s wish comes true and upends an adult’s life, as in Big or Freaky Friday. The film never explains how the wish works, and it doesn’t need to. The rule is simple, the day has a clear deadline and the audience accepts it immediately.

What makes Liar Liar better than most of its imitators is that the magic targets exactly the thing Fletcher needs to change. His lying isn’t a quirk. It’s his job, his charm and the reason his son can’t trust him. The wish forces him to live, for one day, without the habit that’s costing him his family, and that’s why the silly premise lands emotionally.

The Truth Hurts

Much of the film’s comedy comes from Fletcher telling the truth when nobody wants to hear it. He tells his colleagues exactly what he thinks of them. He tells a woman in an elevator what he’d like to do. He answers a question in a meeting with the words everybody’s been thinking. He pays a traffic ticket by confessing every offense he’s committed.

The jokes are often crude and silly, and some fall flat, but the premise gives Carrey endless material. It’s also a sly satire of lawyers, a profession where, the film suggests, being truthful is a professional disability.

There’s an edge to the lawyer jokes that makes them better than they need to be. Fletcher’s firm rewards him for bending the truth, his boss sleeps with him to keep him ambitious and his client wins her case on a technicality that has no connection to justice. The film is broad, but it knows exactly what it thinks of the legal business, and so does every lawyer who’s watched it.

Max

Justin Cooper plays Max, and he’s sweet without being too cute. His disappointment when his dad lets him down again is sad, and it gives the film its heart. Maura Tierney plays Audrey, Fletcher’s ex-wife, who’s tired of watching him break their son’s heart and is planning to move to Boston with her new boyfriend, a nice, dull man played by Cary Elwes.

The father-son story is sentimental, but it works. Underneath the mugging, Liar Liar is about a man who has to learn that the people he loves are more important than winning. It’s a simple lesson, and the film delivers it with real warmth.

The film is smart enough to make Fletcher’s lying something Max has learned to expect. The boy isn’t surprised when his father doesn’t show up. He’s resigned. That resignation hurts more than any tantrum. It gives Carrey’s frantic comedy a quiet sadness underneath. That’s why the audience wants Fletcher to change as much as they want him to win his case.

The Courtroom

The trial is a comic set piece. Fletcher can’t lie to the court, and his client’s case depends on hiding the truth, so he has to find a way to win using only the truth. Jennifer Tilly is funny as the brassy, lying client, all squeaky voice and wide-eyed innocence, and Swoosie Kurtz plays the opposing counsel.

The trial also gives the film its cleverest twist. Forced to find a truthful argument, Fletcher discovers a real legal technicality that wins the case, proving he’s a good lawyer even without lying. Then he realizes what he’s done to the other family in the case. His conscience wakes up right there.

The Airport

The film ends with a chase to the airport, where Fletcher tries to stop Audrey and Max from moving to Boston. He commandeers a mobile staircase, races across the runway after the plane and ends up in a cast, and Max finally gets the father he wished for.

It’s corny, and it’s exactly the ending you expect, but the film has earned it. Carrey’s slapstick and the sentiment finally come together, with Fletcher willing to look like an idiot in front of everybody if it gets him back to his son. The closing credits roll over a blooper reel of Carrey’s outtakes, almost as funny as the film itself.

Tom Shadyac

Tom Shadyac directed, after working with Carrey on Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, and he mostly stays out of the way, pointing the camera at Carrey and letting him go. The direction is flat and functional, and the film looks like an ordinary nineties comedy, all bright lighting and wide shots, built to capture every flail of Carrey’s limbs. It doesn’t matter much. Nobody watches Liar Liar for the camera work.

The film was a huge hit, grossing more than three hundred million dollars worldwide, and it cemented Carrey as the biggest comedy star of the decade.

Crude in Places

Some of the humour is juvenile, and several gags go on too long. The women in the film, apart from Audrey, are mostly there as punchlines or temptations, and the sentimental scenes are laid on thick. Carrey’s energy can be exhausting if you’re not in the mood.

When it’s funny, though, it’s very funny. The pen scene, the bathroom scene and the courtroom scenes are among the best physical comedy of the decade, and the warm father-son story gives the film more heart than it strictly needs.

Craft Note

The Pen Is Blue

Liar Liar is a 7: a big, broad, very funny comedy powered by one of Jim Carrey’s most manic performances, with a clever premise, a sweet father-son story and a few great set pieces. It’s crude and sentimental in places, and the pen scene alone is worth the price of admission.

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