30 for 30: 2002 "Big Fat Liar"
What’s this all about? I turn 30 on Sept. 26, 30 days from the start of this series. To celebrate, I’m going to watch one movie a day for 30 days and spend 30 minutes writing about each one. This post is about 2002. Click here for the original newsletter in the series. Other entries: 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001
“Big Fat Liar” is a movie, that, like its protagonist, has a crazy excuse for everything.
Why does Hollywood producer Marty Wolf (Paul Giamatti) give a ride to 14-year-old Jason Shepherd (Frankie Muniz), anyway? Why, Wolf’s limo hit Shepherd while he was on his bike trying to make a deadline to turn in an English essay he lied about completing, and the kid threatened to sue for whiplash. Seems reasonable.
Why does Wolf steal the kid’s English essay in the first place? His career’s on the line and he’ll do anything to save it, duh. Fair enough.
How can a 14-year-old fly to Los Angeles to get his essay back without his parents knowing? Well, they’re out of town and he saved up a lot of yard work and babysitting money. I have no notes!
How can his best friend Kaylee (Amanda Bynes) also go to L.A., even when she’s supposed to be staying at home taking care of her senile grandmother? Obviously, she gets the local bully (Taran Killam) to dress like a girl and act like he’s Kaylee, in exchange for Kaylee and Jason doing his homework. Airtight reasoning!
How can Jason and Kaylee pull off a prank war to break Wolf’s soul, career and skin color in a mere three days without getting arrested? Obviously, it’s because Wolf is basically this movie’s version of Harvey Weinstein and all of Hollywood works with him but secretly hates him and wants to see him suffer as much as they have. Foolproof planning!
So, obviously, there’s a lot of cartoon logic at play in “Big Fat Liar,” but the funny thing I noticed during my most recent viewing was that every time I had a question as to why something crazy was happening on screen, the movie almost immediately answered it. Its cartoon logic makes sense, especially when you realize it’s a Hollywood-ized version of the Boy Who Cried Wolf, right down to the Wolf and Shepherd character names.
But this is a kids’ movie through and through, and of course I loved watching this movie as a kid — it starred two kids I knew from TV, and it was about a kid sticking it to the Man in a movie that was about making a movie. I talked yesterday about how the “Lord of the Rings” DVDs were like a little film school. The “Big Fat Liar” DVD was actually the first DVD I can remember actively watching an audio commentary for (Frankie Muniz talked about what it was like working with Paul Giamatti). It was also a ton of fun watching the background of the movie for all of the Universal backlot shots to see how other movies were made as well.
And Paul Giamatti. This movie does not work without an actor committing 110% to the bit for the villain role, and Giamatti goes for it. The man actually dyed himself blue. He ran in shoes that were two sizes too small for the final scene (that’s a little nugget that has somehow lodged its way inside my brain from the audio commentary). He danced in a Speedo to Duran Duran. He yelled a good 90% of his lines. His character is psychotic, and he leans all the way into this movie’s goofiness. I must have watched this movie dozens of times as a kid just for that “little blue man” tow truck scene. I thought my love for this movie would have diminished when I re-watched it, another movie victim to how old I was when I watched it, but despite some jokes not holding up, this is still a fun time for me.
I said at the outset of this series that I would pick the movie from each year that resonated the most with me, not the best movie from that year. I can thnk of no better example of that rule than “Big Fat Liar.”
Up next: We take to the high seas with 2003’s “Master and Commander.”
Enjoy this scene from “Big Fat Liar” of Donald Faison making car engine noises.
This newsletter is written by me and edited by my favorite person, Taylor Tompkins. Views expressed here are my own and don’t reflect the opinions of my employer, yadda yadda yadda.
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