I don't think Atom Egoyan's "Where the Truth Lies" is a very likable movie. It's admirable, and it looks good, and a lot of the budget went into details and style that are about right, but the story just leaves me cold.
Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth star as (its unclear to me) either Martin and Lewis or a chintzy answer to Martin and Lewis (the same way Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall would be a chintzy answer to Nichols and May). The distinction is important, because why would Alison Lohman's character idolize these two bums unless they were considered big time. This is a flaw in the screenplay - I don't think Egoyan does a very good job of writing the stage material for Morris and Collins. It's a cheap club act, and I guess that's the idea, but it feels out of whack with the pedestal Egoyan puts them on in relation to the story. (After all, who ever idolized Charlie and Mitzi?)
The story, about a crusading young female biographer trying to get the true story of what happened the night a deal girl was found in their hotel room bathtub, has a lot of labyrinthine twists and turns, not all of which can be followed by the average viewer. You can't even go back in your head later and put it together in your mind, the way you can with other confusing thrillers. The performances are fine - Kevin Bacon stands out as the Jerry Lewis-ish rotten human being, which I believe, is an accurate depiction - but the characters are not well drawn and it's difficult to tell what they're meant to be. We see Alison Lohman's character taking a hard line with her bosses at the publishing house on editorial control, but then she allows herself to be placed in sexual situations with both Morris and Collins in ways that are totally implausible to anything a reputable journalist would ever get involved in. Some plot threads don't make sense: why is the publishing house so worried about Lanny Morris' competing book, when it's clear he has no intention of discussing the mystery of the dead girl? - the central event associated with Morris and Collins (and it must have been the central event - their act was so crummy).
The film does have a distinctive, evocative look. Egoyan does a good job of capturing the time and mood - from the hokey naiveté of the 1960's to the run-down glamour of the disillusioned seventies. The colors are bright in the Morris and Collins heyday - and in the sequences with the dead girl's mother, then muted into autumnal shades for the later years, maroons and walnut browns. But all this backstage whiplash is really wearing - it's orgy after orgy and orgy, loyalties are discarded as easily as clothing. Where The Truth Lies certainly isn't a bad movie, but it may well be the death of show-biz yet.
Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth star as (its unclear to me) either Martin and Lewis or a chintzy answer to Martin and Lewis (the same way Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall would be a chintzy answer to Nichols and May). The distinction is important, because why would Alison Lohman's character idolize these two bums unless they were considered big time. This is a flaw in the screenplay - I don't think Egoyan does a very good job of writing the stage material for Morris and Collins. It's a cheap club act, and I guess that's the idea, but it feels out of whack with the pedestal Egoyan puts them on in relation to the story. (After all, who ever idolized Charlie and Mitzi?)
The story, about a crusading young female biographer trying to get the true story of what happened the night a deal girl was found in their hotel room bathtub, has a lot of labyrinthine twists and turns, not all of which can be followed by the average viewer. You can't even go back in your head later and put it together in your mind, the way you can with other confusing thrillers. The performances are fine - Kevin Bacon stands out as the Jerry Lewis-ish rotten human being, which I believe, is an accurate depiction - but the characters are not well drawn and it's difficult to tell what they're meant to be. We see Alison Lohman's character taking a hard line with her bosses at the publishing house on editorial control, but then she allows herself to be placed in sexual situations with both Morris and Collins in ways that are totally implausible to anything a reputable journalist would ever get involved in. Some plot threads don't make sense: why is the publishing house so worried about Lanny Morris' competing book, when it's clear he has no intention of discussing the mystery of the dead girl? - the central event associated with Morris and Collins (and it must have been the central event - their act was so crummy).
The film does have a distinctive, evocative look. Egoyan does a good job of capturing the time and mood - from the hokey naiveté of the 1960's to the run-down glamour of the disillusioned seventies. The colors are bright in the Morris and Collins heyday - and in the sequences with the dead girl's mother, then muted into autumnal shades for the later years, maroons and walnut browns. But all this backstage whiplash is really wearing - it's orgy after orgy and orgy, loyalties are discarded as easily as clothing. Where The Truth Lies certainly isn't a bad movie, but it may well be the death of show-biz yet.