Caffeinated Clint
If I wanted a couple of hours of titillation, I’d bust the piggy bank and go down to the Crazyhorse – where you get a free bucket to boot. For some reason though, filmmaker Atom Egoyan’s convinced that any male/female with a raging libido is going to get all condensed milk over youthful (so young looking, you’d think she was 14 – hence her credible performance as a girl of that age in “White Oleander” a couple of years back) Alison Lohman in a tryst with the wrinkly Kevin Bacon and his cherry red rump. Frankly, “Where the Truth Lies” is about as sexy as going down on a Playboy playmate with Hepatitis.
Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth, Alison Lohman, Maury Chaykin, Rachel Blanchard
If I wanted a couple of hours of titillation, I’d bust the piggy bank and go down to the Crazyhorse – where you get a free bucket to boot. For some reason though, filmmaker Atom Egoyan’s convinced that any male/female with a raging libido is going to get all condensed milk over youthful (so young looking, you’d think she was 14 – hence her credible performance as a girl of that age in “White Oleander” a couple of years back) Alison Lohman in a tryst with the wrinkly Kevin Bacon and his cherry red rump. Frankly, “Where the Truth Lies” is about as sexy as going down on a Playboy playmate with Hepatitis.
Watchable – but only up until the point when the camera pans down on Bacon’s buttocks or Colin Firth’s canoodled love handles, the striving (so ambitious it seems to have stolen the theme music from “Basic Instinct” and a couple of plot devices from other, better movies) film centres on a young journalist (Lohman) who is writing a story on a comedy two-act from the 50s – Lanny Morris (Kevin Bacon) and Vince Collins (Colin Firth), who we’re informed we’re the most beloved entertainers in America. Though still quite popular all these years later, the journalist is much more interested in uncovering the truth behind a moment in their past when a dead girl (played by Rachel Blanchard) was found in their bathtub. Rumour has it that they – or one of them – was involved in her murder, but it was never proven. Now, the investigative young cub seeks out the men – tricking them into believing she’s someone else, so that they’ll give up the goods – to get the bottom of the story… and in turn, feel just how silky the sheets are on their mattress. Cue the unnecessary wanton sex-scenes…. And prep the airsickness bags.
This film wants to be so much…. It wants to be compelling, it wants to be sexy, it wants to be thrilling and it wants to be original. Unfortunately, it’s none of those things. Sure, Bacon and Firth are pretty good, and Lohman – though not her best, because she’s been terribly miscast – is OK too, but they’ve got nothing to work with here. Take their performances and put them in a better film, and you would’ve something pretty solid.
Look, “Where the Truth Lies” is entertaining enough – but at the end of the day, it hasn’t made good use of it’s a-list trio and in a time when its so hard to get such names attached to good projects, it’s a shame to see them committed to something that wasn’t.
The DVD includes a Making-Of and a few deleted scenes – both of which are about as compelling as the film.
Rating : 
Reviewer : Clint Morris
