The Good Liar Parent Guide

Roy Courtnay (Sir Ian McKellen) has spent most of his life engaged in the pursuit of money, typically by ripping off the unsuspecting and wealthy. Betty McLeish (Dame Helen Mirren) is a retired Oxford professor with no idea what she’s getting into when she meets Roy on an online dating service. Roy thinks he’s hit the motherlode with Betty; a wealthy older woman, living alone, with large reserves of cash. The only snag is Betty’s grandson Steven (Russell Tovey), an uncommonly suspicious graduate student who puts his research talents towards digging up Roy’s unsavory past. Will Steven uncover Roy’s darkest secrets, or will his many enemies catch up with him first?

The Good Liar is another warning for me that being excited about movies is a nearly surefire way to make them bad. Or, at least in this case, tragically unfulfilling. With a cast that has more royal decorations than most palaces you may wonder how this production could fail so miserably. I had the same thought and puzzled out some answers.

The primary issue is that the story isn’t well written. I predicted most of the film’s plot twists from the trailer, which is fine in animated children’s movies, and a lot less fine in suspenseful crime thrillers. The dialogue is usually okay, but seldom moves beyond mediocrity. The plus side is that Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren are clearly having a good time playing cat and mouse with each other. McKellen manages to be both charming and slimy, although that charm evaporates as the film progresses and his lies are revealed one by one. Mirren is a delight as always, shining especially in the last twenty minutes.

The content concerns are a more severe than I had anticipated. I expected the profanity to be the sole justification for an “R” from the MPAA, but the violence is graphic enough to push it in that direction even without the swearing. There is also a rape scene involving teenagers, which despite being non-explicit, is extremely unpleasant to watch. This obviously isn’t a suitable film for family viewing, or even for older teens.

So that leaves me here, lamenting another fond hope killed by poor screenwriting, and wondering how well the film will do on its cast alone. If you really enjoy good acting and think you can stomach the violent content, it could be worth watching. At least the relatively short runtime makes the marginal screenwriting more palatable. If you can’t be good, be brief.