03/21/97
MOVIE REVIEW: Liar Liar
The uncontested truth: Carrey's a riot

**** (out of five)
Starring Jim Carrey, Maura Tierney, Justin Cooper, Cary Elwes, Anne Haney, Jennifer Tilly, Amanda Donohoe, Jason Bernard. A Universal picture written by Paul Guay and Stephen Mazur, directed by Tom Shadyac. Rated PG-13, contains sexual situations, adult themes, profanity, comic violence. Running time: 86 minutes.

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal-Bulletin Arts Writer

After a woefully deranged loop to the suicidal dark side of comedy in the awful The Cable Guy, Jim Carrey bounces back in deliriously goofy form in the hilarious fantasy Liar Liar.

Carrey mugs and overplays and even beats himself up as Fletcher Reede, a lawyer whose life is turned inside out after his disheartened 5-year-old son wishes on a birthday cake that his father won't be able to tell a lie for 24 hours. Carrey is so over the top that the comic even makes fun of himself in the nutty outtakes that accompany the credits at the end of the movie. But it's an endearing lunacy. Carrey seems to be having as much fun as the audience and the laughs just keep coming.

After his son's wish is granted, Fletcher is in a panic. He has made his living stretching the truth in court and out and now he's due before a judge to represent an adulterous bleached-blond bimbo who's suing to get her multimillion-dollar share of community property despite her several affairs. How to put that one across without telling a few fibs?

In other hands, a plot like this that depends on magic and fantasy might have wound up as one of those nonabrasive cookie-cutter comedies that Disney turns out with precision every couple of weeks. A few laughs . . . forgotten the next morning.

But Carrey runs wild with the theme, turning Liar Liar into a one-man comedy revue. He's a riot when Fletcher tests his inability to tell a lie by trying to make himself say that a blue pen is red, turning his attempts into a crazed free-for-all. In another sidesplitting sequence he takes on a boardroom full of humorless lawyers and turns his truth-telling into a bile-spilling roast. And then there's that courtroom, which is full of its own surprises.

Tom Shadyac, a former stand-up comic who directed Carrey's breakout smash Ace Ventura: Pet Detective as well as the Eddie Murphy hit The Nutty Professor, keeps things barrelling along in frenzied fun, although a lot of the physical comedy must have been worked out in great detail with Carrey himself. I mean, after The Mask and Dumb and Dumber, it's clear that Carrey is willing to try anything for a laugh.

Fortunately, Fletcher's personal crisis -- revolving around his ex-wife, who may remarry and move his loving son cross-country -- isn't allowed to get too goopy. There's just enough homey stuff to ground the comedy in reality without making it overly sentimental.

Carrey and Maura Tierney, as his ex-wife, create sizzle. There's also good chemistry between Carrey and Justin Cooper, who plays his cute-as-a-button son.

But the picture really hits on all cylinders in the snappy give-and-take between Carrey and Anne Haney as his sassy, on-top-of-things secretary and between Carrey and Jennifer Tilly as his bimbo client who wants everything she can get. It's one funny ride.