Movies Where A Little White Lie Sets Off The Whole Plot

As its title suggests, Easy A is a partial riff on The Scarlet Letter, one of the most influential of American novels. In the film, Emma Stone, always known for her ability to craft compelling and morally complicated (and compromised) characters, plays Olive Pendergast, a young woman who embraces her identity as the most promiscuous girl in school, even though doing so comes with more than its share of perils.

There is, moreover, a deeper irony at work, as the entire plot was set in motion by a lie: Olive told her friend she lost her virginity to a guy in college, even though this wasn’t the case. The rumor spread throughout the school and, as a result, her reputation, and the lives of many people in her vicinity, are irrevocably changed. As such, Easy A is not only a fascinating look at the way high schools are often incubators for this sort of toxicity, but also a critical examination at the way American culture writ large is still very fixated, and yet unsure about, the nature and power of human sexuality.

The 2000s was a very good period for Jack Black, who appeared in a number of fascinating and hilarious comedies. One of the most enduringly popular is School of Rock. It has all of the ingredients one expects of a comedy of this type: a lovable underdog, a group of talented students, and a music contest.

However, the entire plot is set in motion by a lie told by Black’s character, Dewey Finn, who masquerades as his roommate in order to get the position of a substitute teacher at a local prep school. While his time as a teacher might start as a deception, it’s not long before Dewey realizes the true potential in his students, leading to all sorts of typical comedy hijinks. While his deception is ultimately unveiled, School of Rock nevertheless manages to be the sort of heartfelt and sincere comedy one would expect of the early 2000s.

The Birdcage remains a beloved comedy for many, particularly because it is such a sensitive and surprisingly warmhearted portrayal of a gay male couple in a decade that wasn't particularly well-known for its acceptance of LGBTQ+ people. In the film, Nathan Lane and Robin Williams star as Albert and Armand, a gay couple living in South Beach, whose lives are turned upside down when their son becomes engaged to the daughter of a notoriously conservative politician. 

Very early in the film, the fiancee, Calista Flockhart’s Barbara Keeley, lies to her parents about the true nature of her betrothed’s parents, claiming Albert is a diplomat. Hilarity, of course, ensues, as Armand and Albert do everything in their power to maintain the pretense, even at the cost of their own sense of comfort. Beneath the hijinks, however, there is a powerful and resonant message about the importance of family and about the acceptance of oneself, no matter how harsh the world may be.

Though he was arguably best known for his comedic roles, Robin Williams was also tremendously talented as a dramatic actor, and he particularly excelled in roles that called for him to toggle between pathos and humor. One such role was Lance Clayton, the tragic main character of World’s Greatest Dad. When the film begins, he’s an English teacher yearning for literary fame, who finds himself presented with a sort of opportunity once his son accidentally dies from autoerotic asphyxiation. 

Determined to protect his son’s posthumous legacy, he stages his death as a suicide, but things get quickly out of control, particularly once he publishes a fake diary his son supposedly wrote before his passing. Soon, Lance is awash with praise – and his son is recognized as something of a saint, despite having been, we know, mostly friendless and rather unpleasant. Of course, Lance knows it's all a sham, too.

Ultimately, he comes clean about what he’s done, and though he is rejected by those who had seemed to embrace him, he can at least take comfort from living an honest life. World’s Greatest Dad is macabre and unsettling look at the power of honesty and the pernicious allure of lying.

The classic story of Cyrano de Bergerac – based on the play by Edmond Rostand – has been adapted many times, one of the most prominent of which arrived in 2021, in a musical version starring, among others, Peter Dinklage (fresh off his success as Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones). He is perfectly cast as the title character, who is madly in love with his childhood friend, Roxanne, who is, in turn, in love with Christian, the mysterious and handsome new soldier in town. 

Unfortunately for all of them, Christian is hopeless at expressing his feelings in the way Roxanne expects, so Cyrano, noble and gallant as always, feeds him words and writes letters on his behalf, allowing his own feelings to suffuse these testaments of love. Things get more complicated when a lascivious duke (Ben Mendelsohn), who has his won (very entitled) sights set on Roxanne, sends Christian and Cyrano to war, where the former, realizing his friend is truly in love with Roxanne, sacrifices himself in battle. Later, Cyrano finally demonstrates his feelings for Roxanne, but he dies before they can consummate their love. Poignant and tragic in all the best ways, Cyrano is a fitting adaptation of Rostand's equally heartbreaking play.

There’s a certain genius underlying The Invention of Lying, which takes place in a world in which, as the title implies, the concept of lying simply does not exist. The film’s main character is Mark Bellison (writer/director Ricky Gervais), who becomes the very first person in this world who can tell a falsehood. This spark of dishonest inspiration initially comes as he's trying to get together enough money to pay the rent. The computers aren't working at the bank, so they ask him how much money he has, and he simply… tells them the wrong (and much higher) number.

As is so often the case, one lie begets another, and it’s not long before Mark is telling all manner of lies both big and small. He even becomes a messiah figure of sorts, claiming he can speak to a man in the sky. Because everyone in this world takes his statements at face value as a matter of course, he becomes wealthy, famous, and worshipped. Ultimately, however, he chooses truth when it matters most, allowing his love, Anna (Jennifer Garner), to decide for herself whether she loves him or not. At times predictable in its use of romantic comedy plot elements, The Invention of Lying is nevertheless a philosophically rich film.

Date Night features a truly outstanding meeting of comedy greats, Steve Carell and Tina Fey. They play a married couple, Phil and Claire Foster, who desperately want to inject some excitement into their very dull and routine married life. In order to do so, they go to an elite Manhattan restaurant and, after pretending to be a pair of no-shows (the Tripplehorns), they soon find themselves in the middle of a scheme involving a crooked DA, a mobster, and a mysterious flash drive.

Date Night not only features several hilarious moments with Fey and Carell – who are both at the top of their game – but also skillfully blends its crime and comedy elements into a coherent whole. Beneath it all, Phil and Claire find that they truly love one another and, in this respect, the lie that jumpstarts the whole plot ultimately leads to the couple’s own emotional honesty.

Sandra Bullock delivers one of her usual winning performances in While You Were Sleeping as Lucy, who saves a man from certain death and is subsequently mistaken for being his betrothed. “Mistaken” because she, long smitten with the tall dark handsome Peter (Peter Gallagher) despite never speaking to him, muttered “I was going to marry him," and this tiny lie spread like wildfire. This, in turn, leads to her bonding with his family, particularly his brother, Jack (played by the ever-charming everyman Bill Pullman), and it's those two who ultimately fall in love. 

While Jack and Lucy end up together, of course, but despite the rather standard story, there is nevertheless a great deal of romantic comedy magic to be found in While You Were Sleeping. Of particular note is the bond which emerges between Lucy and her would-be fiancee's family, which poses the central moral question of the film, as she has to decide whether to be honest about her feelings for Jack. Fortunately, her lie ultimately leads to true happiness, not just for herself but for the family as a whole.

The Oscar-winning Atonement is based on the novel of the same name Ian McEwan. It focuses primarily on three characters, young Briony, her sister Cecilia, and their servant, Robbie, the latter of whom engage in a romance. However, their lives are turned upside-down when Briony falsely accuses Robbie of having committed a rape, leading to his being sentenced to prison and, later, forced service in the army during World War II. Cecilia, meanwhile, becomes a nurse. 

The film makes clear how much Briony’s lie has destroyed the lives of Robbie and Cecilia, particularly once it’s revealed they both died – Cecilia during a bombing; Robbie from his wounds just before the evacuation of Dunkirk – before they could ever be reunited. Much of the film is her attempt to give them the life they never had as a result of her actions. It’s a beautiful, wrenching film that reveals the power of lies and truth to reshape, and destroy, lives.

With Hereditary as his feature debut, director Ari Aster demonstrated a keen eye for how to use horror to delve into the darker corners of human psychology. In this case, he weaves together family secrets, demonic possession, and trauma to craft a truly terrifying and unsettling film.

Much of the film’s plot revolves around Toni Collette’s Annie, her son, Peter (Alex Wolff), and her daughter, Charlie (Milly Shapiro), all of whom are descended from an apparent witch, whose surviving follower wishes to bring a demon into the world. The plot, with all of its tragic twists and turns, is set in motion when Peter, wishing to attend a party, lies to his mother and says he’s going to a school event. She, in turn, insists he take his sister along. While he's in another room at the party, she treats herself to some chocolate cake, which she doesn't realize is tainted with walnuts. For her, that's a potentially lethal allergy. As Peter realizes what happened and frantically drives her to the hospital, she is quite accidentally decapitated.

Horror after horror ensues, as Annie and Peter grapple with not just the consequences of her death but also with the demon, Paimon, and his human servants who wish to bring him into the world of the living. In this case, a lie ends up not only costing a young girl her life, but also unleashing a truly destructive evil. 

Though not enormously successful at the time of its release, S1m0ne has come to be viewed as a prescient Hollywood curiosity, as it focuses on a director, Viktor Taransky (Al Pacino), who invents a virtual actress to star in his films while pretending to the world she's a real person. What begins as a fairly benign bit of obfuscation on his part soon becomes a phenomenon he can’t control, as the press is, unsurprisingly, captivated by this new ingenue. Not only does she manage to win two Oscars, she also becomes a true star, and everything Viktor does to try to convince people of her artificiality only ends up reinforcing her popularity.

In its story, S1m0ne is very much a harbinger of the deep fake and its ubiquitous presence in the landscape of the present - not to mention the rise of artificial intelligence itself. No matter how much some might want to put this particular genie back in the bottle, like the virtual actress of this film, it refuses to be tamed.

The various films in the Harry Potter saga are filled with fascinating (and, at times, frustrating) characters, and few are quite as infuriating as Gilderoy Lockhart, who is introduced in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Played by the great Kenneth Branagh, he initially appears to be a truly brilliant and talented wizard. However, as Harry and Ron discover, his only true skill is in obliterating people’s memories, which has allowed him to steal their accomplishments and claim them as his own.

His lies have a particular bearing on the plot of the film, since he claims to know where the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets can be found. Unfortunately for him, Ron and Harry realize his duplicity and, when he tries to use the same spell on them, it backfires, erasing his own memory in the process. Like far too many other wizards in this universe, he puts his own ambitions above the well-being of others.

The 1990s seems to have been a particularly rich period for comedies in which someone pretends to be someone they’re not, often with significant consequences for pretty much everyone around them. In Houseguest, for example, Sinbad stars as Kevin Franklin, a man who passes himself off as dentist named Derek Bond, and manages to ingratiate himself into the life of Bond’s old friend, Gary Young (played by the late, great Phil Hartman). The two haven't seen each other in years, allowing Kevin some wiggle room to pull off the ruse.

Predictably, this has significant consequences for Gary's life. Among other things, Kevin - as Derek, of course - inspires Gary to stand up to his boss and to re-establish a stronger bond with his children. Various other hijinks ensue – including a pair of mobsters, having been on Kevin's tail all along because of some unpaid debts, who take the family hostage.

Few directors working in classic Hollywood had quite the knack for crafting hilariously funny screwball comedies like Preston Sturges, and in Hail the Conquering Hero he is in particularly fine form. In the film, a young man named Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith is discharged from the Marine Corps. However, things become complicated when one of his fellow Marines sets up a charade, one in which Truesmith has been discharged after becoming a hero, complete with a Marine coat with several medals. 

After this, things get ever more complicated as the lie metastasizes, so much so that the residents of his town decide he should run for mayor. Ultimately, of course, he not only comes clean about what’s happened, but also manages to get the woman he loves and becomes the mayor after all. Though obviously played for laughs, the film is also a rather potent critique of American society’s (often far too uncritical) embrace of military hero worship.

The 1930s were a particularly strong period for screwball comedy; one notable example is Midnight. Like many such movies, it begins with a lie, this one told by Claudette Colbert’s Eve Peabody, a showgirl who manages to bluff her way into a concert using a simple pawn ticket . However, things begin to escalate shortly thereafter, when a search begins for the impostor, at which point she avoids capture by claiming to be the “Baroness Czerny.” Predictably, this leads to all sorts of misadventure, particularly once she becomes part of a wealthy man’s attempt to disrupt his wife’s extramarital affair. 

Meanwhile, the cab driver with whom Eve has a romance is also trying to get back with her, leading to even further shenanigans. Of course, the central couple does end up together, suggesting the extent to which Eve’s lie has, in a strange way, brought about her own happiness (and saved another marriage in the process).

Housesitter is one of those unsung gems of 1990s romantic comedy that manages to take the typical attributes of the genre and turn them into something truly unique. In large part, this is because of the undeniable chemistry and talents of stars Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn, who appear as Newton Davis and Gwen Duncle. Newton is an architect whose life is filled with disappointment, particularly once the love of his life refuses to marry him. Gwen, meanwhile, is a pathological liar who tends to blaze trails of excitement and chaos.

After the two meet and have sex, Gwen pretends to be Newton’s wife, a lie that comes to have momentous consequences. Not only does she manage to improve his life in almost every way possible – including getting his boss to finally recognize his potential – she also finds herself falling in love with him (and, of course, he starts feeling the same way about her). With its outlandish premise and charming twists, it shares much in common with the screwball comedies of Hollywood’s past.