In “A Little White Lie,” written and directed by Michael Maren, a regular person manages to convince everyone that he is the reclusive, one-hit-wonder author of a greatly famous and controversial book, and hilarity ensues from there. The film’s biggest scam, though, is not its counterfeit protagonist, but rather the sloppy narrative and direction that wastes the film’s humorous enough idea and the listless performances from A-listers looking for anything more than just a paycheck. Michael Shannon, one of the best American performers of his generation, stars. His stare is as piercing as a knife, and he can bend and soften his angular face for dramatic effect.
Here, though, Shannon appears unsure and disoriented in the role of C. R. Shriver, the writer, or more precisely, a Shriver who shares nothing with the renowned novelist other than a last name. The character of Shannon is a New York handyman, not the mysterious genius he claims to be, who wrote The Goat Time, a novel that has been widely praised for reasons that are, at best, nebulous. Shannon’s drifting attitude, though, comes out as more transparent than dramatic. Even though he speaks quietly and distantly, you can see he’s wondering how he got himself into this film. Yet, we follow along when Shannon’s down-on-his-luck Shriver attends a small Midwestern literary festival hosted by a failing university named Acheron, which mistakes him for the genuine deal. Simone Cleary (Kate Hudson, far removed from her movie-star magnetism in “Glass Onion”), a lecturer and writer, organises the yearly event every year in the hopes of convincing her sceptical colleagues that the festival is still worth their time and money.
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The routine is standard: the imposter Shriver makes an effort to blend in while being hauled from one stuffy cocktail gathering to the next, all of which are listed on a calendar he stubbornly refuses to read. But he muddles through as he crosses off items with Cleary, the ebullient writer Wassermen (Don Johnson), the superfan Delta (the lovely Da’Vine Joy Randolph), the inquisitive journalist Benjamin King, and the other professor played by M. Emmet Walsh. It’s meant to be hilarious, all these hijinks. Yet, the film’s attempts at comedy fall flat. One of the numerous problems with “A Little White Lie,” which is based on the novel Shriver by Chris Belden, is that it doesn’t explain how and why Shriver became so popular thanks to just one book. Many in the crowd, including Brown herself, appear to think of Shriver as a sexist author of a book replete with terrible language, thus this subject naturally comes up during a Q&A session with Aja Naomi King’s feminist author Blythe Brown.
If his prose hasn’t held up through time, then why would Acheron extend an invitation? If The Goat Time is so terrible, then why does the liberal Cleary still hold him in such high regard? But the plot turns when Brown goes missing and Shriver becomes a key suspect in Detective Karpas’ (Jimmi Simpson) inquiry, so we don’t get to think about those questions until the end of the film. Another area that “A Little White Lie” doesn’t quite get into is the film’s take on the literary world’s pretentiousness and the innate impostor mentality that all writers face at some time. What Maren is attempting to say about such lofty questions is unclear, given the story’s lack of depth and the characters’ verging on caricature. Some of his artistic decisions don’t help matters much, like how clichéd it is to have a second Shannon appear out of nowhere to symbolise Shriver’s inner voice.
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The film’s too-sharp appearance and Alex Wurman’s restless soundtrack, a jazzy pulse that neither fits with nor lifts the film’s tone, leave much to be desired. However, neither Hudson nor Shannon gives very compelling performances, so the audience has no reason to care about their characters’ eventual relationship. The plot has a double twist at the end, with Zach Braff making a lacklustre cameo appearance. The sad reality is that it’s a distracting addition that does nothing except make “A Little White Lie” even less engaging.
The film is now showing in cinemas and may be accessed online.