THE GOOD LIAR

A preposterous premise, flirting with the absurd, leaves one groaning with its inanity; septuagenarian “Betty” (Helen Mirren) and octogenarian “Roy” (Ian McKellen) meet on a dating site (lunacy commences); coy clichés, saturated with gullibility, daffy naiveté; Betty, a supposed Oxford scholar, hoodwinked into combining her fortune with Roy’s; from the get- go, we are cognizant that Roy is the optimum grifter, flimflam man, master of artifice, duping and swindling his “marks”; his perverse charm infects Betty, but not her grandson “Steven” (Russell Tovey, worth concentration), who researches Roy’s sordid, duplicitous history, excavating secrets; squalidness oozes from Steven’s investigation. Betty, the quintessential “victim.”

Unfortunately, the simplistically lame first half of “The Good Liar” (directed by Bill Condon) cannot be rescued by the excessively sensational conclusion; transitionally inept (felt like two different films), Betty and Roy’s conspiracies unmasked, truths divulged; inconsequential, as to who was the better “liar”, but, as the infamous diva Mae West once quipped about her lifestyle, “goodness had nothing to do with it”; an apt rendering of “The Good Liar.”

TWO STARS!!

Peneflix