The Hoax (15)

Hoaxers have enjoyed a long and dishonourable tradition in art. The best of them achieve an antiheroic status, having created their falsehoods from a highly combustible mixture of talent, mischief and a nerve for gambling – in that respect, they're rather like film-makers.

In modern times, the greatest literary hoax has been the so-called Hitler Diaries in the Eighties, although not far behind it in terms of brass neck was the so-called autobiography of the super-reclusive billionaire tycoon Howard Hughes. The book, sold for a million dollars, would have satisfied an American media and public ravenous for details of this hitherto inscrutable man. The Hoax tells the real-life story of how it fooled nearly everyone, and how close it came to being published.

It starts as a common-or-garden tale of literary failure. In 1971, Clifford Irving (Richard Gere) is a novelist whose book is said to be the next big thing. Instead, his publishers go cold on it, and it gets dropped: "a third-rate Philip Roth knock-off", says his editor Andrea (Hope Davis), and she is supposed to be his champion.

There's a very embarrassing scene – the first of several – when Irving, crushed by rejection and fobbed off by Andrea, storms into a meeting and announces that he's got the "book of the 20th century" in preparation, though, of course, he himself has absolutely no idea what that book might be. After some agonising, he has his "eureka" moment: he will give them the life story of the single most fascinating man in America: the aviator, mogul, eccentric billionaire and "lunatic hermit" Howard Hughes. So what if he's never spoken to Hughes? He'll just have to invent it.

He enlists the aid of his best friend Dick Suskind (Alfred Molina) and his artist wife Edith (Marcia Gay Harden) to get the audacious fraud up and running. Between them, they will concoct a story just plausible enough to fool the publishers and promising enough to keep them hooked. It helps the hoaxers no end that, on the one hand, Hughes hasn't spoken to the press in 15 years, and that, on the other, rumours of his craziness suggest he might be capable of anything – even hiring a schmuck like Irving.

As for the problem of Hughes discovering his name on an autobiography he's never written, Irving reasons that he'll never come out of hiding long enough to denounce him. So the lies begin to pile up, the zeroes on the fee multiply, and the book starts to gain the whispered reputation of solid gold.

All of which should be the basis of a satirical comedy on the art of blague and the gullibility of bright, media-savvy people. The director Lasse Hallström and his scriptwriter William Wheeler understand the exhilarating nature of deception, as well as the insatiable demand for gossip about those celebrities most reluctant to reveal themselves.

There's one king-size flaw in this, however, and it's to do with the casting of Gere. Irving, whatever he's like in real life, is here a quick-thinking trickster, a con man feeding a seemingly pathological urge to improvise and dissemble. His literary deception has a parallel in his private life, we gather; he's rebuilding his marriage to Edith after straying with a bimbo actress (Julie Delpy) he still can't keep away from.

But while Gere can play the unfaithful lover in his sleep, he simply doesn't convince as a man desperate or devious enough to kid a whole country. The role needs an actor to convey the shabbiness of the whole scheme and something of its pathos: a William H Macy, perhaps, or a Jeff Daniels. I was going to add Steve Buscemi, but realised that nobody would believe a tall story from him.

Gere is a performer just too pleased with himself to allow a glimpse of this con artist's self-loathing. There has always been something blank in his gaze that works against the idea of psychological complexity. (His signature note of anguish is to bow his head and close his eyes, which doesn't look very anguished at all.) He's done duplicity before, of course – brilliantly as the cop in Internal Affairs – but his forte has been charm, not depth.

As his nervous conspirator, Molina is more credible, forever in a flop sweat and hopeless when it comes to thinking on his feet. But it soon becomes clear that he's playing stooge to Gere, exaggerating his clumsiness and tendency to panic simply to make Irving look good. He also has to work up an expression of awe when Gere starts to "impersonate" the voice of Howard Hughes, the trick that will supposedly quash any lingering doubts as to the book's authenticity. All it actually sounds like is Gere trying too hard.

In its latter stages, the movie aims for a level of seriousness when a dodgy deal Hughes made in the Sixties threatens to rebound on Richard Nixon (a more famous fraudster). Irving includes it in the fake autobiography, and soon White House aides are having conniptions about its threat to the Prez. In fact, it was Watergate a few months later that would do the job. This diversion down the corridors of power rather muddies the waters and turns The Hoax into something darker than it really is. All of a sudden Irving isn't just involved in a larky deceit, but a high-stakes Washington scandal.

The film itself seems to have been working in disguise, starting out in the footloose spirit of Catch Me If You Can and then morphing into All the President's Men. Like Irving's book, it doesn't hold up.