Distinctive Dating is the name of the online dating app on which Betty (Helen Mirren) and Roy (Ian McKellen) create their dating profiles in The Good Liar. They connect and quickly find themselves drawn to each other — or rather drawn to what they claim to be. For example, Roy is a smoker, but says he’s never held a cigarette; Betty is a drinker, but says she rarely touches the stuff. They’re harmless little lies, but the deception quickly builds, at least on Roy’s end.
After the adorable pair meet for a sweet enough date and lament about the difficulty of finding love at their age, he grabs a cab to a strip club. It quickly becomes clear he’s involved in some shady business, as he convinces a group of suits behind a sparkly curtain to invest with him so that he can double what they offer. He also happens to have a pair of thugs in his corner, ready to deliver a nasty and surprising shot of violence when necessary. Each time they deliver a solid blow or Roy gets the money he’s after, he chuckles, and whistles, “Tickety boo!”
It’s all very cute. And precious. And adorbs. And, let’s be honest, a little patronizing.
Betty, meanwhile, appears to lead a quaint life, her only companion being her dutiful grandson Steven (an always charming and slightly agitated Russell Tovey). That and her seeming blandness only last so long, however. After learning that Betty does quite well for herself, Roy goes from dashing dap to sly swindler, revealing plans to his partner that he might not have the best intentions for her going forward. But — here’s a shocker — Betty is no pushover.
Again. Very cute. And precious. And adorbs. And, let’s be honest, still patronizing.
To reveal much more would be to give away the plot, which The Good Liar does very suddenly and all at once, throwing every twist it can imagine at the wall. It involves the Second World War and a whole lot of misogyny. If the film is attempting to deliver a message, this isn’t the right method of shipping. In fact, the reveal earned some heavy laughs at my screening when I’m sure director Bill Condon was hoping for tears, if anything.
In the end, The Good Liar struggles to understand what it wants to be, shifting from romance to mystery to thriller to revenge film — and it’s not particularly good at any.
The true shame here is the utter waste of Mirren and McKellen. The pair have never acted together before, and make for a duo full of chemistry, equal parts endearing and conniving. They’d be an incredible match as either a late-in-life couple who find each other on a dating app, or a pair of miniseries-style criminal investigators. Here, there both, but neither. Unfortunately, this is the best The Good Liar offers: It makes us wonder what could have been.
2 stars
The Good Liar opens across Canada on Nov. 15.
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2019
