the invention of lying
I expected a barrel of laughs - I didn't get that. Instead I got a really sweet movie which I thought brought up nicely what lies themselves offer the world in a positive way -- not something anyone usually highlights.
I suspect some groups, specifically really religious ones, will get upset and IMO, miss the point of the movie. I actually felt it wasn't mocking faith at all; after all, one has to ask why, suddenly, did he get this ability to do what no one else can do and not long after get the broad strokes of Jeudo-Christian beliefs?
Even if one sticks to the 'it's just a lie' - it makes relgion the sweetest, most beautiful thing we've ever taught ourselves to believe in. It makes it not about right or wrong, not something worth going to war over, just a basic moral code with a happy ending instead of a bleak eternity of nothingness and solitude. Same thing - contrast the wedding vows of "you'll stick around as long as you want" vs. "I'll love you forever" (which was actually contrasted in the two guys and wasn't a lie); that we tell our selves thins, have standards, and make promises we maybe can't always make but are better for trying to make them anyway. And it's worth noting that a lot of the visibile cruelty melted away after that in the film, IMO, once he had invented religion be it a lie or not. It helped make the world a better place.
A world with out lies was pretty bland. Everything was flat. Everything was judged on immediate 2-D opinions. Pretty people were wanted, "ugly" people were not. There were no stories. There was no fiction. There were no actors. There were no deep thoughts. People believed anything that was said, because no one analysied anything. People were emotionally hard, cruel, mean, and caustic. I don't remember ever hearing a joke told in the movie, or anything like that.
Only when Mark could say something that wasn't... did we have stories, imagingings. A lie was used to save his neighbor's life, and to give an old woman peace. The fact that he could lie made him start looking deeper - he could see the nerd were in love, he could see that Anna was a nice person, and could he teach Anna to start actually thinking - not just observing. And of course the big push is to show that even the truth is needed and valuable; he could have lied to Anna, but he didn't mislead or use her and that is why she went with him in the end.
Lies make us think. They make us observant. They make honesty meaningful. Can do helpful things. It can make people better. It gives people depth. Some people are still jerks, and some people are still nice, but that ability to think and to dream and to create -- it all goes back to doing something that isn't. Or saying something that wasn't. It came off to me that lies aren't always bad; that lies can change the world for the better just as much as for the worse. That we need them as much as we need honesty. That lies can be a kindness.
Add that to the message of it's okay not to be what society wants (society might call you a loser, you know deep down that you're more) and to change your mind, to grow (you might want fat kids with snubbed noses) was more than acceptable, and I think there is a sweet, moving movie in there.
Unfortunately, I think it will get tarred and feathered in the claim that it's mocking something and thus a bad unwatchable thing, when, IMO, in a way it's giving the highest compliments to it. Which honestly makes me very sad, I prefer movies I come out of and go "Hm, I'll have to think on that" to mindless cruelty, vulgarity and toilet humor masked as something to laugh at than what it really is.
YMMV.