David Brent: Life on the Road

[DA Baracus]

Just coming back to this trailer again, I can't believe how bad it is and how far it is from what made Brent funny and endearing.

 

Brent was never endearing. He was always a knob with no redeeming qualities up until the very last episode.

[StreetwiseHercules]

Brent was never endearing. He was always a knob with no redeeming qualities up until the very last episode.

Disagree. Always felt a little bit sorry for him and was kind of rooting for him.

[RB-Scotland]

While I liked those podcasts, they do come across as the bully, the bully's mate egging him on and the bullied. Was that the point?

 

That was a wee bit of it, but between there also being a lot of more friendly exchanges, Karl often saying it was just banter between mates and the fact Karl was also totally ruthless in how he slagged off Steve, I don't really find it uncomfortable, although I could understand someone feeling that way about it on first listen.

 

Been listening to them again recently, forgot about some great stuff; Karl criticising the level of tennis in the paralympics, "just give them a game of swingball". 

[Ya Bezzer!]

"I'm currently a singer songwriter.  And a rep."

 

Made me laugh. And you can watch whole series of comedy these days and not laugh.

 

I don't think there is much to lose here.  The Office is stand alone, this is something different.  If it is terrible it will be forgotten quickly, if it is decent its a return to form.

 

Coogan brought back Partridge and it worked so I think Gervais can do something with Brent in a contemporary setting, what every one needs to do though is have their expectations at a reasonable level.  The Office is one of the all time greats, he's just never going to hit those heights again.  At the same time you'd hope it was better than his post Extras work.

[MarkoRaj]

Probably not worth its own thread but I just watched Gervais' straight to Netflix film Special Correspondents starring him and Eric Bana with Kelly Mcdonald as well. Pretty decent for a straight to TV film tbh, it's been slated but I think the criticism is rather harsh. It's not laugh out loud hilarious all the way through but there are funny moments and a reasonable enough plot for what it is.

Solid 7/10 imo

[Francesc Fabregas]

I went to see this earlier this afternoon and it's a bit of a clunker. Imagine a complete rehash of The Office Christmas special, minus the emotional pull of Tim and Dawn's blossoming love, and you're about there. Take away any warmth whatsoever and you're probably even closer. This feels less like a David Brent movie and more like a chance for Ricky Gervais to indulge in his rock-star fantasies. Other than sating the creator's whopping great ego, it didn't need to be made.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Christmas special completed Brent's character arc - he finally realised that clinging onto fame was a waste of time, he seemed to find love, and he finally stood up to Chris Finch and told him to fuck off. It was absolutely perfect, so perfect that it really left nowhere else for him to go. And, as I've mentioned in the first paragraph, this movie is more or less based on the exact same premise - after a number of embarrassing mis-steps, Brent eventually realises that chasing his dream of being a singer-songwriter is a waste of time, he seems to get the girl (a coworker), and the Finch-like bully (a fellow rep) is slain. What's the point when we've already seen it done so much better 13 years ago?

I had also mentioned David Brent's character hasn't changed since then - in fact he's a worse person now than he ever was at any stage in The Office. What made The Office so wonderful was its brilliance in keeping the perfect balance between cringe and comedy. Brent was a buffoon but there was a well-meaning man underneath it all. Here, he's a fucking dickhead. He's pathetic and petty but lacks the pathos he did in 2003. His jokes and his attempts to explain them are genuinely excruciating, and his relationship with Dom Johnson, a talented rapper, is just awful. Brent appears to use him as a prop, a token PoC he can use to undo anything offensive he might have said (and no doubt Ricky Gervais would be delighted I found some of this movie offensive). The moment where Brent calls Johnson "my nigger" is jaw-dropping, and not in the way the his creator intended. I refuse to believe Brent lacks the self-awareness to know he's belittling and undermining his friend throughout and by the mid-point of the movie I was hoping Johnson would tell Brent to fuck off.

Brent's band, Foregone Conclusion, are gigging around Berkshire. Brent has cashed in numerous pensions and is using a number of credit cards to fund the tour, putting together an expensively assembled session group and paying for hotels and a bus (despite the band all living in the local area). It doesn't make a lot of sense (at one point, the engineer says he's staying a hotel four miles from his home) but that doesn't stop Brent. The gigs are poorly attended and the reception is lukewarm. A number of mishaps occur along the way, some amusing, some horrible. The band dislike Brent and don't socialise with him, and his attempts to reach out and connect with them are horrendous, and defy belief at points. (The "mockumentary" feeling doesn't seem to work this time around and seems to come and go whenever's convenient.) Before the final gig, Brent realises he's been wasting his time and his money pursuing his dream - much like he did towards the end of the Christmas special when he talks through his dismal nightclub appearances with Carol - and the engineer, who has been openly hostile towards him throughout, suddenly warms and tells him he likes him.

And, just like that, the gloom is lifted! The final gig goes over reasonably well and the band hang out with him for a final pint, admitting to the cameras it had actually been quite a good laugh all along. It felt as though there were a couple of scenes missing from this, and the face turn happened all too quickly and all too conveniently. The closing scenes in the Lavichem office mirror the closing scenes of the Christmas special with the bully (Jeremy, this time around) getting a cup of water tipped over him by Brent's love interest. It's unusual to side with a villain in these instances but Brent had been such a cock throughout, he deserved all the contempt the rest of the Lavichem sales team had thrown at him.

In a lot of ways it reminded me of an Adam Sandler movie - think Eight Crazy Nights or Jack and Jill or That's My Boy - where a lead character can act like an imbecile, oblivious to their own idiocy and selfishness, before getting a sympathetic scene to trick the audience into believing the film has a heart. I can't believe I'd ever compare David Brent: Life on the Road to something from Happy Madison Productions but here we are. The Office was tremendous at dragging out heartfelt moments from the minutiae but this movie is so badly rendered it feels like a triplicate version of the Brent I know.

There are a handful of laughs, mostly towards the start, but nothing substantial. It's a pretty disappointing and unnecessary addition to the David Brent canon. 

[The Chlamydia Kid]

I'm going to see it tonight as well.

[YER SISTERS YER MAW]

I was in two minds whether to go and see this as I love The Office & Brent but at the same time expect this film to be a disappointment. After reading the above review it seems my expectations are probably correct. I think I'll  just hang off and watch it on Showbox.

[Guest bernardblack]

So disappointing. I couldn't be a bigger fan on the office and gervais in general but I was checking my watch to see how long I had left. Not good

[The Chlamydia Kid]

Was absolutely awful.

[invergowrie arab]

I would like to be as eloquent as Cesc, it's fucking shite.

[The Chlamydia Kid]

I liked gervais from when he used to do the Wee segments on the 11 o'clock show. He was brilliant. The office is the finest comedy ever made. Every line is utter genius that I can recite word by word.

The Christmas specials were the perfect ending.

This film is horrendous. He's tried to rehash some of the classic scenes from the original- pub scene "gardeners arms", getting pulled up for an inappropriate joke by his boss, the songs like in the training day episode. But they are all terrible this time- totally OTT and predictable.
He's also just a complete loser in this film that it's not funny seeing him make a fool of himself anymore it's just awkward and sad.

[We Are Pars Fans!]

Love the office, one of my fav shows ever. However, this was pretty shit

[18May1991]

Nowhere near as funny or intelligent as The Office but pretty funny in parts. Too many folk on here over analysing it or just saying its shite. It's not at all. Infinitely funnier than most 'comedies' released in cinemas. 

7/10 IMO. 

 

The Office was a 10/10.  

[Francesc Fabregas]

7 hours ago, The Chlamydia Kid said:

This film is horrendous. He's tried to rehash some of the classic scenes from the original- pub scene "gardeners arms", getting pulled up for an inappropriate joke by his boss, the songs like in the training day episode. But they are all terrible this time- totally OTT and predictable.
He's also just a complete loser in this film that it's not funny seeing him make a fool of himself anymore it's just awkward and sad.
 

That's a very good point. The more I think about it, the more every set-piece seemed to be a triplicate version of the best scenes from the TV show. The bit where he shoots the audience member in the face with the t-shirt gun? Similar to the moment he head-butts Karen Roper. The scenes where he takes the chubby women back to his hotel room? Along the same lines as his date with the woman in the white chiffon scarf (because fat people are funny!)

 

1 minute ago, 18May1991 said:

Nowhere near as funny or intelligent as The Office but pretty funny in parts. Too many folk on here over analysing it or just saying its shite. It's not at all. Infinitely funnier than most 'comedies' released in cinemas. 

7/10 IMO. 

 

The Office was a 10/10.  

The movie relies on the audience being 100 per cent behind David Brent and therefore being able to excuse some of his appalling behaviour. But how can you let him get away with some of the things he says here? He's an arsehole here and it says a lot that I was on the side of the Lavichem sales team rather than the titular hero. This movie has taken a very well-rounded, grounded TV character and turned him into an arsehole with a tacked-on redemption that tries to undo the previous 80-odd minutes.

I don't think the movie's shite. But I think it's only sporadically funny and it didn't need to be made in the first place.

[DA Baracus]

I never thought Brent was a good guy in the TV show until the Christmas special. Throughout the series he was a total knob and had numerous chances to be sound and redeem himself but kept chucking them away. He came across as highly unlikable and sympathy for him was hovering around zero due to his stubborn reliance on trying to impress folk and his petty jealousy.

As stated, the Christmas episode worked so well because it somehow made you feel sorry for him and had you rooting for him, despite him being an absolutely dreadful p***k of a man throughout the series and indeed much of the special.

[GrahamJags]

I enjoyed the film. Is it funny? Hardly. I wasn't rooting for him at all throughout the film, but the way I saw it was a very dark depiction of a man who had clearly lost the plot. He is desperate for people to like him but at the same time, is unbelievably self-absorbed and ultimately everything he did was for his own personal gain to feed an ego which still somehow exists after all his failings in life.

The only scene I really had a fault with was how rushed the whole "had a breakdown, went to therapy" thing was. If they had spent longer on that, then the mental state he was in would've made his character far more well-rounded. I think Gervais rushed this to have a bit more time for the comedy, and less on the Derek-esque tug at the heartstrings stuff.

It's nowhere near as good as The Office, it was never going to be. I did think the film was a very good watch though.

[J_Stewart]

Watched half of it on a flight this afternoon. The disabled song is genuinely one of the worst things I've ever seen. We're we supposed to believe that a moderately intelligent man would write and perform a song so obviously offensive, patronising and belittling of the disabled? Utter nonsense.

[smpar]

Watched half of it on a flight this afternoon. The disabled song is genuinely one of the worst things I've ever seen. We're we supposed to believe that a moderately intelligent man would write and perform a song so obviously offensive, patronising and belittling of the disabled? Utter nonsense.

It is obviously offensive, but that's what makes Brent so horribly comical. He thinks he's a morally upstanding bloke who accepts all, and I believe he means well because he (sometimes) knows what's acceptable and what isn't but he just has an awful way of articulating this. It shows in the series, when he does the whole Eric Hitchmough thing and Gareth points out he should "do the bit about wanking with his little hand" and Brent won't do that in front of everyone because he knows it's not acceptable.

He hasn't mastered subtlety, or using lyrics metaphorically and so has no other way to express his beliefs than to just say it in its plainest form, which admittedly does get a bit tiring in the film. The fact that he usually stands on stage explaining his songs show that he's so deluded about his own songwriting, I'm sure someone in the film says that it's beyond belief that Brent feels he has to explain his songs because there's no way his lyrics can have any other meaning.

The film was definitely missing something, the jokes just weren't as subtle as the one-liners and comical facial expressions used in The Office. There are episodes I've seen more than 6 or 7 times and I still notice wee jokes that add to the comedy, such as Tim poking his head into the shot of the camera to say, "he went home to get it" when Brent gets his guitar out. That kind of subtlety didn't happen with the film, I've only seen it once but I don't think there are any jokes I missed, it was all very obvious.

There are definitely some messages about mental health in the film, which might explain Brent's bursting desire to be liked, and I think it - mentally - did him so many favours when the sound engineer told him he genuinely likes him.

[RB-Scotland]

Saw this last night, it was pretty meh.  I recall one reviewer saying it felt like a drawn-out version of Gervais' comic relief stuff as Brent, which I think is accurate.

He plays him in such an over-the-top way for a lot of it, it's like he's imagining because it's a stand-alone movie there will be viewers unfamiliar with the character and he needs to ladle on everything that was gradually built up in The Office to fill them in.  The film lacks subtlety throughout really; his lackey at Lavichem was a nice addition but we get the idea - we don't need him to beat us over the head with it and say "it's lucky we found each other!" in his talking head interview.

Dom plays the straight-man role pretty well, a lot of the best stuff involved him.  The "Sturridge" and "pelicans are like a joke bird" lines made me laugh, and the bit with David going in the huff over the record label only wanting Dom was much more true to the character and effective in making people's annoyance with him justified than having him act like a caricature earlier on in the film.