User Reviews

Big Fat Liar is pretty much a lie from the start. At the menu screen, you see a girl so you'd think she's the main character, but she's not. So the movie starts up with a 14 year old boy named Jason who lies all the time. He doesn't do his paper so he has to turn it late. Along the way, he meets up with a director who happens to be filming a movie where Urkel is a cop with his partner as a chicken. The kid leaves his paper in the limo of the director and he turns it into a movie. Jason then goes to Hollywood and steals, vandalizes, and lies more in order to learn that lying is wrong. Oh and instead of planning how to get the director to admit he stole the film from Jason, he and the girl have a 2 minute montage on them trying on clothes. They eventually find everyone who hates the director and ruin his career. So remember kids, lie, vandalize, and steal and someday, you too can have a bad movie yourself!

Big Fat Liar (2002): Dir: Shawn Levy / Cast: Frankie Muniz, Amanda Bynes, Paul Giamatti, Jaleel White, Donald Faison: Big fat stupid comedy that looks phony right down to its production values. Title indicates one factor gaining higher level of denial. Frankie Muniz may have to attend summer school if a particular report isn't passed in. It ends up in the hands of greedy filmmaker Marty Wolf who makes a film out of its contents. To prove his innocence Muniz and Amanda Bynes go to Hollywood to obtain the report and sabotage Wolf's career. Mean spirited comedy where the villain's only friend is a stuffed monkey without indication as to why. Screenwriter never examines possible hurts of Wolf but stages him for juvenile sight jokes. Directed by Shawn Levy with Paul Giamatti as the scheming Wolf in a variation of his role in Private Parts where he was much more rounded. Muniz and Bynes become virtually unlikable. Jaleel White spoofs his sitcom role in what appears to make him a good sport but ultimately his leaving his famed Family Matters role left him with bigger matters and this film doesn't solve those. Donald Faison plays a limo driver and struggling actor and after this film he will likely be struggling much more. Honesty theme isn't the focus particularly when one examines the dreadful marketing. This leaves the biggest lie told by the ads. Score: 2 / 10

To quote Roger Ebert, "I hate this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it."

I think that that sums it up.

However, many would argue that one must explain "why" one dislikes a movie. Well, to be fully honest, I don't believe that this movie even deserves that luxury. However, in the interest of hopefully sparing at least one soul from two or so hours of torture, I will endeavor to perform this unearned action.

The movie was full of really odd, poorly-done segments that didn't fit well together. For instance, Frankie Muniz rides his bicycle into a limo. He then tells the people inside that they hit him, and that they have to give him a ride to school or he'll, well, I guess "tattle" on them. The reason he's going to school is because he completely blew off an assignment that was a huge part of his grade, or something, so the teacher gave him an extension, which he's trying to make. If I'm not mistaken, his project was a story about a liar. However, Muniz leaves the project in the limo, and the man in it happens to be a Hollywood producer who steals this (extremely horrible, almost as bad as this movie) script.

When Muniz tells his family what happened, they don't believe him. So, in an effort to prove that he was telling the truth, he travels to L.A. with his friend (Amanda Bynes: she can be lovable, but movies like this and "She's the Man"... well, I guess I hate hate hate them); well, wouldn't any kid who wanted to prove he wasn't lying to his parents go to such extreme measures, even risking their lives at various points, just to say, "I told you so"? In any event, he's not exactly a well-to-do kid anyway; him doing his work was apparently quite uncommon for him. So why shouldn't he be blamed and get a taste of the real world?

Perhaps I'm taking this a bit seriously, but even relaxed, non-serious movies can still be good without having to resort to, well, I don't know what exactly... I suppose, whatever qualities that made me hate hate hate this movie. Things like kids traveling 1000 miles and risking their lives to prove to their parents that they weren't lying about something relatively trivial.

I like Giamatti, but I have to request that this great actor pick much better films in the future (though it seems he has with "Sideways" and "Cinderella Man"; good for him), because the very notion that a producer would steal, let alone like, the extensively stupid script developed by Muniz's character is so very insulting.

I urge people to not say, "This wasn't meant to be serious... it was just supposed to be a little fun." Well, had the producers, writers, actors, etc, been more serious in working on making it not serious but still good, it might have been a little more fun. But they weren't. And it isn't. It's just a big waste of film and 2 hours of your life.

My use of superlatives is not in any way unnecessary. Humanity as we know it will become dumber (see, this movie already has me getting stupider) after viewing this movie, and if enough people view it, brains will become mush, the stock-market will crash, politicians will unknowingly launch nukes at each other, aliens will exploit this and invade earth, and we will be reduced to the very lowest levels of quality in film-making.

If I can save one person from viewing this film, my life will have been worthwhile. My existence will not have been pointless, and I will die a consoled man knowing that the earth is better for my having been here.