The Good
Lie ***
Dir: Philippe Falardeau. With: Reece
Witherspoon, Arnold Oceng, Ger Duany, Kuoth Wiel. 110 mins. Cert: 12A
The poster positions
Philippe Falardeau’s follow-up to Monsieur Lazhar as the most turgid variety of soft-focus, Ron Howard-produced awards
bait – legally blonde Reece Witherspoon rescues Sudanese refugees! In
actuality, the film reserves its closest attention for its migrants, charting
with sincerity and authenticity the journey of these so-called “Lost Boys” from
war-ravaged homeland to a Kansas City that, with its Happy Meals and waffle
houses, makes a banally abundant kind of Oz. Margaret Nagle’s spirited script
steers away from the expected arcs and climaxes, instead making wry sport of
the American Dream as a vaporous, ever-shifting concept shaped by profit
motives, political bias and outright BS: Witherspoon’s late-arriving counsellor
is but an overworked cog in an imperfect system, no more heroic than anybody
else here. The rougher edges of an In
This World or The Golden Dream
were perhaps beyond its multiplex-oriented remit, yet Falardeau works in
surprising levels of funny, winning, stirring detail.
The Good Lie opens in cinemas nationwide today.
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