- Also Known As:
- Unknown
- Year:
- 1997
- Country:
- Predominant Genre:
- Comedy
- Director:
- Outstanding Performance:
- Premiss:
- A fast track lawyer can’t lie for 24 hours due to his son's birthday wish after the lawyer turns his son down for the last time.
- Themes:
- Alienation
- Destiny
- Emotional repression
- Identity
- Loneliness
- Loyalty
- Narcissism
- Personal change
- Redemption
- Self-expression
- Solipsism
- White culture
- White supremacy
- Similar (in Plot, Theme or Style) to:
- Unknown
- Review Format:
- DVD
Guilt-ridden White Christianity
Although this movie, true to White form, conflates Honesty with Truth, it is hilarious - with Le CARREY on top form in a superbly-muscular physical comedy of the highest order.
Using the obvious trope that lawyers are paid to lie on behalf of their clients, the film pretends to explore the difference between truth and lies. In reality, it dramatizes the difference between honesty and lying. Whites here present themselves as knowers of truth such that when CARREY is forced to be honest about what he really thinks – at any given time – his words are presented as absolute fact rather than mere opinion; elevating his character to the status of godlike infallibility – along with those of Whites everywhere.
At no point, in this comedy, does CARREY’s character admit that he does not know something; making it clear Whites believe that whatever they think must be true, simply because they think it. The movie is, thus, as dishonest as its central character starts out being, because of its inability to analyze its own premiss.
Just because someone is honest about what they truly think and feel does not mean that they know the truth. Here, truth is relative - such that it could never be trusted by an honest man. If someone truly believes that two plus two equals five, that does not make it so – no matter how much they believe it. If the Pope took a lie detector test and was asked: Is there a god? what would the answer prove? (apart from the fact that the Pope believes there is).
Copyright © 2014 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute this posting in any format; provided mention of the author’s Weblog (Esthetics) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.
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