While my footprint shrinks I’m making a point to spend more quality time with family. I left the selection up to them for movie night last weekend and they chose this old Jim Carey vehicle.

I laughed a lot despite myself, and also couldn’t help noticing how it nailed a boatload of major manosphere themes. The only thing missing is a false rape accusation, to make it the ultimate neomasculist flick with every box checked.

For the duration of the film, the title character (a lawyer) is involved in a court case. It is a divorce-rape of the highest magnitude, depriving a good father of his children and awarding half of all he has worked for to a gold-digging slut who has been habitually unfaithful.

Meanwhile, the lawyer’s own life is a perfect demonstration of game, and the female rationalization hamster at work.

He is a remorseless BS artist who thinks nothing of manipulating and using people to get what he wants. And this attracts people all the more.

Just during the length of the movie you lose track of how many times he flakes out or blows off his ex-wife and their son. But no matter how many times he does it, she’s always ready to give him another chance. Meanwhile, her supplicating beta boyfriend orbits (even proposing marriage), doing everything “right,” but just can’t generate the tingles in her like the reprobate main character does.

At one point, when under a spell forcing him to tell the truth, the liar admits to his ex that he blew off their son’s birthday to have sex with his cougar boss in order to make partner in his firm. She is angry, initially, but goes right back to her old ways of giving him undeserved chance after chance.

By the end, the beta chump is dumped (despite being and doing everything women say makes the “perfect” man) and it’s obvious that, when the sun goes down after the last scene we are shown, the ex is going to invite the liar back into her bed.

A sad commentary, of course, but no less true because of it.