Big Fat Liar

Sometimes a movie is so bad it's good. Sometimes I movie is so bad it's bad. Sometimes, albeit rarely a movie is so good it's bad. Sometimes a movie is bad on purpose, trying to be "so bad it's good" that it's bad. And than there's Big Fat Liar.

This movie is, fantasy. Logic and reason do not apply here, and that's a good thing.

The film stars Frankie "oh my gosh I hate this kid" Muniz. Oh my gosh I hate this kid. He's just creepy, whiny and weird. It also stars Amanda Bynes. She's pretty awesome, and I'm quite saddened that she has quit acting. However, the real star here is Paul Giamatti. More on that later.

So our film begins with Jason Shepherd (Muniz) lying to people. The lies all seem inconsequential. Except one. He somehow forgot to do a paper that, guess what, counts for a third of his grade. Oh no, how will he get out of this one? Well long story short his teacher gives him three hours to write the paper, or he will face summer school. He manages to come up with something, but on his way to turn it in, he gets hit by a limousine. Inside is famed movie producer Marty Wolf (Giamatti) who reluctantly gives Jason a ride the rest of the way, when Jason threatens to sue him. However, Jason accidentally leaves his story, entitled "Big Fat Liar" in the limo! OH NOES! So of course, Jason ends up in summer school, which sucks. Oh, and Amanda Bynes is the movie too, playing Jason's best friend Kaylee. She hasn't really done much yet, and honestly she serves much the same purpose of a house plant. So Jason and Kaylee go to see a movie, and they see the trailer for a film entitled "Big Fat Liar". That's right, Wolf stole his thousand word story, and decided to turn it into a movie, and got a trailer out, all in a matter of days. Like I said, logic and reason don't apply here.
So Jason decides to go to LA to have a talk with Mr. Wolf. His parents are conveniently going away for a few days leaving him alone with his older sister. She, of course takes off with her boyfriend and is never seen again in the movie. Even more conveniently, Kaylee's parents are going away too! But uh oh! Kaylee was supposed to stay with her Grandma Pearl! So they hatch a genius plan to have one of the "bullies" that Kaylee tutors pretend to be her. He does this because...hey I guess it's kind of funny.
So when they get to LA Jason basically waltzes right into Wolf's office and asks him to call his Dad and tell him he did the assignment. Instead of simply saying no, Wolf pretends that he's going too, gets out the story, and "accidentally" burns it up with a cigarette. This is what I really like about the movie. Giamatti overdoes it so much, and quite literally becomes the meanest man alive.
That's enough of a synopsis, but needless to say it gets better from there. Donald Faison and John Cho turn in great and funny performances. Cho (before he was famous) plays a film director clearly modeled after Chinese director John Woo, which leads to some of the movie's funnier sequences.

All in all, this is a great example of a movie throwing logic and reason to the wind and being all the better for it. I give Big Fat Liar 3/4 stars.