Liar Liar is a 1997 Jim Carrey movie that is arguably one of his best (although he has some stiff competition from his other movies).

The basic premise of the movie is that Jim Carrey plays a deceitful lawyer who lies on a daily basis, both at his job and to his son and ex-wife. His son, upset about his father constantly going back on his promises, decides to make a birthday wish that his dad can't lie for an entire day. The wish comes true, and comedic hi-jinks ensue.

The movie establishes a few unspoken but fairly obvious rules about the nature of Jim Carrey's character's newfound honesty:

1. He cannot blatantly tell a lie
2. He cannot withhold a truth
3. He cannot ask a question for which he knows the answer will be a lie

All of these of course come to light in the film in hilarious ways, such as:

• After having sex with his boss to boost his career, he says he has "had better"
• Upon exiting an elevator where the occupants are noticeably recoiling at a bad smell, he blurts out "it was me!"
• After being pulled over, he admits to a slew of traffic laws that he broke, along with showing the officer all his unpaid parking tickets

There was, however, one instance of his honesty that has always jumped out at me. It occurred during the courtroom scene in which Jim Carrey's character must try to win a case by misleading the jury even though he cannot lie or deceive in any way. His plan is to try to postpone the case for another day so that he can lie again, and to get some extra time asks the judge if he can take a restroom break...

The judge asks if it can wait, and he begrudgingly says "yes", but afterwards says that if you hold it, then it can permanently damage the prostate gland, making it difficult to obtain an erection or even become aroused. Upon hearing this, the judge asks if it is true, and Jim Carrey responds "it has to be." The judge grants him a bathroom break and says that he should take one himself.

This brings to light a very interesting path that the movie could have taken if it wasn't a comedy movie. Could Jim Carrey's character have been an oracle who, for 24 hours, knew if anything in the world was a lie?

If he wasn't so self absorbed, then maybe he could have realized the incredible opportunity that his son's wish gave him. Anything in the world that he had ever been curious about, he could have simply just seen if he could say it or not, determining if it was a lie. He could have made groundbreaking discoveries in science, religion, philosophy, politics, etc.

This is the house used in Liar Liar. I needed a non-copyrighted image for the post and this was it.
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Of course, it may not have actually worked out like this. The movie never really makes clear if Jim Carrey cannot purposely deceive people in an absolute sense, or just in relation to his own knowledge of truth. He starts his statement about "holding it" by saying "I've read that..." implying that he read something that suggested a version of truth and he chose to believe it.

This also brings into question the concept of absolute truth, and if it even exists. There are many questions that, when deeply thought about, do not have an obvious "truthful" answer. For example, is it wrong to kill someone? Most people would say "yes". What if that person tried to kill you or someone you love, is it wrong to kill them then? If you believe that humans are just animals who seek status, then killing would be a logical way to get rid of your competition for said status, meaning that it might not be "wrong" to kill them. So you can see that questions of morality can often be ambiguous in terms of absolute truth, as our morality is so often influenced by the society in which we live (I believe it was Nietzsche who floated that thought).

Since Jim Carrey's character in the movie is a lawyer, he would probably understand the vast amounts of addenda needed for laws such that people will not be able to find loopholes in them. Since he would likely understand all these complexities, if a person asked him a complex question would he be required, under the "no lying" conviction, to give the person a long and detailed answer that would outline every possible scenario?

Could he have also exploited this concept to then intentionally deceive people, even if he couldn't lie or withhold a truth? To go back to the statement about how "holding it" could lead to erectile dysfunction, his knowledge of the truth was based on something he read, which was either true, untrue, or true with a myriad of conditions. Statistically speaking, there are a lot of things in the world that are "possible", but only occur under the correct conditions. If someone asked "are planes dangerous", how would he have answered that? The answers of "yes" and "no" could be considered equally accurate. Is it possible to die in a plane crash? Yes. In that sense, planes are dangerous. Are you more likely to die in a plane crash than any other action that you could possibly take in life? No. In that sense, planes are not dangerous.

To that end, he could have answered every question with the response "it's complicated", and not have been deceiving anyone, which would have been fitting, as he was a lawyer.

This is, in short, how many people are able to lie in a sense while thinking they are being honest. The dirty truth is that many things in life cannot be known directly, one has to put faith in the information we are given, or have to choose between conflicting sources of information in order to determine "truth". You can read two articles on the internet that say different things, and you have to analyze which one is the more reliable source before you choose which one to believe, if any.

The most powerful determination of truth for any human is, of course, life experience. You can read all the statistics you want that show how safe your neighborhood is, but if your house gets robbed then you will be less inclined to think it is safe. This is why people sometimes make choices in their life that lead them to objectively worse situations, simply because their real life experience tells them that it is a better choice.

So, if Liar Liar really happened, then it could have either been a turning point in humanity where we learned the answers to some of life's most difficult questions, or it could have simply caused a lawyer to get creative with how he phrased and answered questions so that he was not technically lying or being deceitful, in his mind anyway.

But that would have been a boring movie.