I got this in an e-mail from a friend of my mom. I rofl'd so hard after reading it. I wonder how the people involved with the film are going to respond. The quoted text was in the e-mail.
Warning: There are spoilers from the movie in the quoted text. If you don't want anything revealed, don't read the e-mail.
"Hello everyone,
Please, please read this email. It's a bit lengthy, but it's weighing
heavy on my heart and I just had to share this with you, my friends and
loved ones.
Tonight I went to see the new movie, "The Invention of Lying." After
seeing the ads on TV, I imagined it would be a funny movie. It actually
was funny up to a point... and then I stopped laughing.
The movie is set in an imaginary world where everyone tells the
truth--lying doesn't exist. And since everyone says exactly what they
think, as you can imagine, it sets up some very funny (even awkward)
scenes. The main character is an ordinary man named Mark (played by Ricky
Gervais--who is usually a very funny actor). Mark finds that his life is
going downhill fast, and suddenly discovers that telling a lie can get him
anything he wants (since no one in the world even knows what a "lie" is).
As I said, it sets up some very funny moments in the movie.
However, at one point, Mark is summoned to the hospital where his elderly
mother is dying. The mother tells Mark she is afraid of dying because, in
her words, it's "an eternity of nothingness." In order to comfort his
mother in her last moments, Mark tells her not to worry--that when she
dies, she will go to a wonderful place and live in a mansion and see all
her loved ones who have already passed on. The mother is comforted and
smiles as she dies. In other words: Mark was telling his mother a lie--the
idea is that Mark made up the whole notion of Heaven just to comfort his
mother in her dying moments.
But it gets worse! Word spreads quickly that Mark has "inside information"
about what happens after death, and so hundreds of people gather outside
his house pleading with him to tell them what he knows about life after
death. Even news cameras from all over the world are camped outside the
house so everyone can find out what he knows. Mark spends the night
writing down some "ideas" and he goes out the next morning to share these
things with the crowd (which had held a candlelight vigil there the night
before). He attaches his papers to two empty pizza boxes (the movie's
attempt to mock Moses and the Ten Commandments).
Mark tells the waiting crowd that there is a "man in the sky" who watches
everything they do. The "man in the sky" causes natural disasters, causes
people to die, and makes bad things happen. But if you are good, then the
"man in the sky" allows you to go live in your mansion in the "wonderful
place" for all eternity when you die. If you do bad things, you end up
going to a terrible place--but only if you do three bad things (three
strikes, in other words). And since the "man in the sky" causes bad things
and kills your loved ones, he makes it up to you by letting you live in the
wonderful place after die. In other words: the movie is saying that Mark
"invented God, and that the "man in the sky" (God) is not real. Thus,
people go around believing in the "man in the sky," worried that they will
get their three strikes and go to the terrible place--and some sit around
doing nothing; wasting their lives because they know they will go live in a
mansion in the "wonderful place."
In the end, Mark finally admits to the woman he is in love with that the
"man in the sky" isn't real--that he made it all up. So Mark marries the
girl and lives happily ever after.
In my view, this is just another Hollywood ploy to make a stab and
Christians and our faith in God. If you want to see the movie for
yourself... to see what's actually there, then by all means, go. But if I
had known this ahead of time, I would have never wasted my time and money
to view this piece of ungodly trash. I thought about getting up and
walking out, but I wanted to wait and see if maybe there would be some kind
of resolution at the end where God might be vindicated in some way, but it
didn't happen.
I firmly believe that as Christians, we should not waste our time humoring
Satan to see this movie. Remember what the Scriptures say: "The fool has
said in his heart, 'There is no God'" (Psalm 14:1).
LOLOLOL, anyone else heard about this?
