Imagine what higher education would be like if human beings were incapable of willful deceit. No handing in late papers with the made-up excuse of a broken laptop, no assuring Mom on Parent’s Weekend that no — you’re not hung over — just tired from studying …

This is the premise of Ricky Gervais’ (Ghost Town, the British Office) newest comedy The Invention of Lying, which is set in an alternate reality where lying has yet to be discovered.

As Gervais interprets it, the inability to lie makes humans blunt, and completely lacking in sentimentality. It is a world completely without poetry, sympathy and euphemisms — the sign on the nursing home reads “A Sad Place for Hopeless Old People,” a Pepsi ad on a bus states “When They Don’t Have Coke.” For someone like Gervais’ character Mark Bellison — an overweight, underappreciated loser — a world without lies is thus brutal. Upon picking up his dream girl Anna (Jennifer Garner) for a blind date at the beginning of the film, Mark is told flat out that he is less attractive than she had hoped, and would he mind excusing her for a moment to finish masturbating before they go out? A great supporting cast, including Tina Fey and Rob Lowe, to give two examples, helps to make Gervais’ vision of a world without lies and self-censoring even more absurd (and offensive).

Mark’s luck is to change, however, when he unwittingly tells the world’s first lie, and after a little practice, is able to lie and fabricate his way into wealth, fame — and eventually, into the arms of his beloved Anna.

Despite all of the benefits, however, Mark soon learns that lying can bring trouble.

Trying to comfort his dying mother, Mark makes up that the afterlife is a happy place filled with friends, and a free mansion to boot. An eavesdropping doctor (Jason Bateman) and several nurses overhear. One day later, the entire world is clamoring to hear his wisdom. How did he learn so much? Will he share with them all that he knows?

Mark’s answer? Substituting the stone tablets of Ten Commandments for two scrawled-on pizza boxes — he becomes a dead ringer for a prophet. He tells the world what he told his mother on her deathbed, and several embellishments later, has started the world’s first religion.

This looks like the start of what might be a scathing, tongue-in-cheek attack on religion, the likes of which would make Bill Maher blush, but like others in the movie, this plotline never really goes anywhere.

In the end, the film is all premise, and no follow through. Gervais seems to be making several points and critiques but they are never fully resolved, and the internal logic of the film often contradicts itself — problems that could be easily forgiven were the movie funnier and less tedious.

Gervais neglects several intriguing plotlines, in favor of focusing on the dullest — namely, the development of Mark and Anna’s relationship. Change Gervais for Jonah Hill (who, by the way, also appears in The Invention of Lying with a cameo role) and you could have a less funny, less adolescent and ironically, blunter version of an Apatow film. Boy meets girl. Boy falls for girl, but girl is way out of boy’s league and everyone knows it. Girl comes around anyway and realizes that she loves him despite his weight issues (because in Gervais’ mind apparently love can still exist in a reality depicted as being completely devoid of deeper feeling?)

His world without lies ultimately strikes me more as a world without imagination, because when it comes down to it, The Invention of Lying feels like just another romantic comedy — albeit one where the already mentioned Hollywood illusion that a short fatty can easily bag a babe is thoroughly mocked before it is realized.

In short, though it has a great premise and starts with a punch, this movie disappoints. I cannot tell a lie.