Lying at the top

It is becoming increasingly apparent that Jim Carrey is the Jerry Lewis of the 1990s.

The slapstick humour, over-the-top facial mugging and clownish poses in Carrey's latest vehicle, Liar Liar, could have come straight from The Nutty Professor or any of Lewis' oeuvres.

This means, of course, that Carrey will have a short but intense period of fame where he can draw a US$21 million (about HK$163.8 million) pay packet for appearing in Liar Liar - he probably feels now, at the top of the United States box office, as if he can do no wrong. However, Carrey will eventually fall from grace while remaining a hero in France, just like Lewis.

Carrey's other predecessors include Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, and even Charlie Chaplin - although it is doubtful whether Chaplin would produce such an unsophisticated comic vehicle as Liar Liar were he alive today.

Carrey is a fairground clown; a smiling buffoon with runaway eyebrows. He is comedy at its most basic, proof that simple slapstick is still the most enduring gag.

In Liar Liar Carrey plays a sycophantic lawyer named Fletcher Reede whose professional life is predicated on half-truths and outright lies; sadly, this has spilled over into his personal life as well.

After his divorce, Reede cons his way around his five-year-old son's life, played by Justin Cooper, telling tall tales to make up for his continuous absences.