Gervais on the other hand assigns his chubby misfit a completely undeserved love interest and, gallingly, makes a pitch for audience sympathy.Įven Gervais doesn’t appear to be having all that great a time, despite dishing out the character’s signature giggle – a sort of breathless high-pitched wheeze – as if it were some sort of trump card.
The joke is simply that they are fat there is absolutely nothing else to it (wait, actually, there is: one of them says – ho ho – she’s constipated).
When Brent takes a couple of overweight women back to his fleapit hotel room, they wolf down champagne and chocolate. The protagonist still brings the cringes but this time around they feel particularly icky, without much in the way of characterisation or anything resembling reverse social commentary (Brent is no Borat and Gervais is no Sacha Baron Cohen). A drunken scene with Brent imploring Dom to call him “nigger” leaves a bad taste, as does a what-was-Gervais-thinking moment when his character stretches his eyes to impersonate Chinese people. To say Gervais doesn’t quite nail it is to put it very mildly. Most of the songs are cheesy ditties about showing compassion: to American Indians, for example, and to people with disabilities. The band includes rapper Dom (Doc Brown) who was handpicked by Brent because of the colour of his skin, to demonstrate his apparently tolerant attitude. In his eyes this will be an epic, cross-country tour where big crowds and record deals await in reality it is a few pit stops in dingy places a few miles from his home. The plot, which plays out as if it were organised by Murray from Flight of the Conchords, has Brent finance his own vanity tour for his band A Foregone Conclusion. A nervous breakdown and subsequent therapy is mentioned then quickly brushed aside in favour of a narrative about Brent attempting to realise a long-held dream of becoming a rock star. Having fallen down the corporate ladder a couple of rungs since his days as regional manager of paper company Wernham Hogg, Brent is now flogging tampons and cleaning products. The protagonist still brings the cringes but this time around they feel particularly icky. It’s light years from the quality of a Christopher Guest satire or, say, Spinal Tap – though Gervais’ wafer-thin storyline indicates some vague inspiration from the latter. But this deflating, repetitive, sedative-like one-note exercise feels like the milking of a cash cow. In different hands – or with Merchant on board – it might have worked. If it doesn’t work the film will feel like it has no script, and if it does work the film will still feel like it has no script. Written and directed by the star, this time without the assistance of The Office collaborator Stephen Merchant, David Brent: Life on the Road finds itself in a classic mockumentary bind. Few would deny Gervais’ tragi-dag dunderhead his place in the comedic pantheon, but even fewer would cheer at the sidelines for a big screen inauguration. Intentionally cheap looking, with a fly-on-the-wall ointment completely antithetical to the term “cinematic”.Īll these years later, The Office’s incorrigible antagonist David Brent (Ricky Gervais) arrives with his very own movie, and boy does it feel like he’s lugging shit up hill. With a low-fi, faux documentary aesthetic, adopted to varying degrees in subsequent shows (including Modern Family, Parks and Recreation and a long-running American spin-off) this was the boob tube as a thoroughly bought-for-a-song affair.
Commentary on david brent life on the roadmovie tv#
Around the turn of the century, when TV programs such as West Wing, The Sopranos and The Wire were breathing life into what would become known as a new Golden Age of television, UK sitcom The Office was fanning the fires of a very different movement on the idiot box.
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