Before Jim Carrey was wandering around while the mustachioed Dr. Robotnik in Sonic the hedgehogHe got caught in a web of his own honesty in the 1997 laugh riot. liar liarwhich is now streaming on Prime Video and honestly, might be the most Jim Carrey that Jim Carrey has ever been. Directed by Tom Shadyac (Ace Ventura), liar liar Carrey plays Fletcher Reede, a morally bankrupt lawyer who uses lies the same way most of us use oxygen. But when his son Max, fed up (Justin Cooper) makes a birthday wish so his dad can’t lie for 24 hours, Carrey finds himself in a world of trouble, in what might be one of his most quotable films along with Dummies and dumbers.
In addition to Carrey and Cooper, the cast also includes Maura Tierney as Audrey, Fletcher’s ex-wife, Cary Elwes as Jerry, Audrey’s overly nice new boyfriend, Jennifer Tilly as the hilarious and scheming Samantha Cole, Fletcher’s client with a dodgy case, and Anne Haney as Greta, Fletcher’s long-suffering assistant who gets a front-row seat to his entire emotional breakdown.
Was ‘Liar Liar’ successful?
liar liar was a box office success, grossing over $302 million worldwide on a budget of $45 million. The film also earned Carrey a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical, presumably for the fact that he spends an entire 90 minutes with his face made of rubber and elastic, or the fact that he spends an entire scene hitting himself in a bathroom to try to avoid walking out of court.
Speaking of that scene, Carrey, speaking in an interview to promote the film at the time with Bobbi Wygant – revealed that the bathroom scene had to be even more “insane” before it was controlled.
“We go into the scene and I think the script says something like ‘he hits himself.’ (laughs) So we walked into that room about a week before and we looked around and I thought, I need to bang my head on the toilet and we played with it and came up with physical parts. There was actually a lot more, but it just got crazy. (laughs). That was a one day session, I think it was a one day session, and it was painful, it was really painful! “I came home and had to count my bruises.”
liar liar is on Prime Video now.
Fletcher Reede, a lawyer whose success is based on his ability to lie convincingly, is suddenly forced to face the truth when his son Max wishes he couldn’t lie for a day. The wish comes true and Fletcher finds himself unable to tell even the slightest lie. This inability to lie comes at the worst possible time, as he finds himself in the middle of a major court case and struggles to repair his relationship with Max and his ex-wife, Audrey.
- Director
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Tom Shadyac
- Execution time
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86 minutes
- Writers
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Pablo Guay
