But this post isn’t about the film, per se. Rather, it’s about the film’s egregious use of product placement…or rather, the sense of product placement within the film. This post was imagined to note and then analyze the presence of four key brands within the film (Pizza Hut, Budweiser, Coke & Pepsi) as quid-pro-quo product placement of the “We’ll use your brand, you give us money” variety. So let’s start with that.

One key product placement-esque moment within the film comes when Gervais’ character, Mark Bellison, composes and then delivers what are essentially the 10 Commandments as envisioned by a person who just learned he’s the only person on Earth who can lie (or even knows what a lie is). Wanting to have something more weighty than just pieces of paper to read from, Bellison ends up pasting his Commandments to…Pizza Hut boxes. Throughout the ensuing scene, the Pizza Hut logo is featured prominently as Bellison delivers his pronouncements from the steps of his apartment building. Classic product placement, right? Turns out that’s not exactly what happened in the case of The Invention of Lying.

After Googling for some support for my analysis, I discovered this piece from Cinema Blend. At the end of the printed interview, Cinema Blend’s Katie Rich asks the film’s screenwriter & co-director Matthew Robinson about the film’s product placement. Robinson’s response: “I think it’s so funny when people say, oh God, there’s so much product placement in the film. We didn’t get a penny.” As it happens, despite the prime real estate afforded to popular brands, no money changed hands.

Perhaps the fact that these products were featured in the film without having paid for the privilege makes it more interesting than simple product placement. Robinson notes in the Cinema Blend interview that, when writing the script, he wanted to lend some authenticity to the world the characters inhabit. Using Pizza Hut and Budweiser, Coke and Pepsi, just made sense. Later, when they tried to get paid for these promotional opportunities, no one would bite–but they left them in. (They’re allowed to do that, because it’s essentially satire, which is protected.) Ultimately, within the context of our current media environment, audiences are left assuming that the presence of these familiar brands within the film is the result of product placement. In fact–do a Google search for “Invention of Lying Pizza Hut” and you get scores of articles referencing the film’s egregious use of product placement (and, incidentally, that Cinema Blend article).

The question remains, though: is that assumption for good or for ill? And for whom?

For now, however, just a quick note on gender. So, throughout the film, Jennifer Garner’s character likes the cute, roundish Ricky but rejects his advances for fear of their union producing “fat, snubbed-nosed children.” In the long run, of course, he gets the girl and the final scene features the happy family, years in the future, with the pregnant Garner serving dinner to Ricky and their fat, snub-nosed (yet cutely roundish) son. The message is rather simple it would seem: fat, snubbed-nose guys can be charming or wealthy and, really, what’s so bad about fat, snubbed-nose little boys? Heck, they might just grow up to be charming or wealthy.

My only real observation is that this scene would have been utterly different were it a fat, snub-nosed little girl. The fat, snub-nosed boy, the movie teaches us, can grow up and marry Jennifer Garner. Pretty sweet deal. However, the female version, the movie tells us…well it doesn’t tell us anything cause fat, snub-nosed girls aren’t in movies. However, it’s probably safe to say that the warm, aww-shucks feeling the film’s final scene offers would have been severely mitigated were the audience subjected to thoughts of the chubby girl’s potential future difficulties as a result of being overweight and plain-looking (at least in comparison to the rest of the film’s women). So guys go for looks, girls go for status and if you’re a guy who writes movies, well, pretty sweet deal. Best not to mention what it implies for everyone else.