David Brent: Life on the Road – Film Review
Director: Ricky Gervais
Starring: Ricky Gervais, Jo Hartley, Doc Brown and Ben Bailey Smith
Release Date: Aug 19
Halfway through the film, in the band dressing room, David Brent is politely asked to leave when he notices the door squeaks.
He pushes it. First open. Then closed. Then open again. Slower. And slower. Until eventually it is totally agonising to watch.
And without cynicism, we genuinely have to ask: is this funny?
Ricky Gervais is an unpopular comedian. While he has plenty of fans who defend his work, there are many who believe he is a celebrity who lucked out with hit series The Office and has been coasting that wave ever since. A notion this film fully reinforces.
But incorporating his un-likability into his most famous character and to play it up for laughs was undeniably a genius move. And even more admirably, Gervais used our feelings of contempt in The Office as a springboard, to fully enhance the emotional payoff when we finally discovered that downtrodden David Brent had a little humanity in him.
David Brent: Life on the Road retreads over all that material with very little innovation.
The opening act is essentially a recap of the final few episodes of The Office, showcasing David and his big dreams of stardom, despite working as a rep at a tampon factory.
The close of the first act, where he leaves to go on tour, feels more like an ending than the actual finale itself because it mirrors the show’s final episode. It’s a strange set-up, playing out like a 3-parter, where the final two chapters are just an afterthought.
This isn’t to say the rest of the film is bad, but it is unnecessary. It doesn’t do anything new with the character, and the story could easily have been devised by a decent editor with the show’s script and a thesaurus handy.
It timidly taps into the subject of mental illness, which may have added a further layer of humanity to Brent. This story thread is hastily unraveled for the sake of a joke however, though admittedly one of the best/most cringe-worthy.
The catch-phrase for this film is undoubtedly going to be “You’ll like it, if…”, because this is subjective humour at its most blatant. Laughing at someone’s expense, even if they are fictional, can elicit complex emotions, with sympathy or mortification at least flavouring the gag itself. How readily you can dismiss those feelings will feed into how much you enjoy this movie.
What’s certain is that it will provoke a strong reaction out of its audience, good or bad. Race, gender and homosexuality, none of these topics are off-limits and Brent prods at these issues blindly and childishly to cause some mind-melting embarrassment. “I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry” states one of the interchangeable band members after a gig mishap, bluntly summarising the entire film in a single sentence.
It’s another unfortunate misstep, having such a weak supporting cast. Ben Bailey Smith plays a rapping protégé and is the closest we get to a ‘Tim’ but he is sadly underused. The rest of the band members have no charm, lacking the empathy so many of the cast in The Office had.
As a result, we don’t really have any other characters to fall back on or relate to. With Brent at centre stage, and the awkwardness just a constant barrage, this can be overwhelming. It makes him more difficult to tolerate and, to counter-balance that, the film writes a much rosier ending for him than the show had.
And yet, this doesn’t feel nearly as organic or satisfactory as it should. It isn’t earned, like the show’s ending was.
Gervais is on great form though, masterfully oozing social awkwardness in a way that feels mostly natural. The best bits are the moments that actually feel like a documentary, the sadly naïve reflections he has, or his more subtle attempts to be ‘part of the band’.
The character might annoy you, especially that giggle which is extremely overused, but there’s some undeniably solid material here that’s just stretched too thinly.
If you enjoyed The Office, then this is…well, not more of a good thing, but more of the same thing. There’s nothing here that was necessary for the story and having such an underdeveloped supporting cast means the character isn’t portrayed as cleverly as when he was on TV.
It’s still David Brent in top form though. Viewed as a Best Of compilation rather than a film, this could be compared to the best plate of liver and onions you’ve ever had.
Score: 3/5
Written by Stephen Hill
