★ ★ ★ ½ ☆
Britain’s finest comedy character since Alan Partridge
returns for a big screen outing as face-scrunching as his finest television
moments. Ricky Gervais lifts David Brent from the confines of beloved Slough to
take his band, ‘Foregone Conclusion’, on a pitiful tour of the South East,
taking heed of Partridges’ own cinematic outing, Alpha Papa, not to stray far from the drab greyness of England in
the process. Much like Coogan’s film took great strides to inhabit the body of
an authentic action movie, Life on the
Road makes a real effort to align itself with the rock band belligerence of
This Is Spinal Tap.
This isn’t to say the laughter lies in Brent’s music being
sloppily written or shockingly performed (in fact, largely the opposite is
true), but rather in the way his trademark misunderstanding of political
correctness and woefully misplaced self-belief is woven expertly into genuinely
catchy songs. You won’t realise you’ve been subconsciously knee-tapping to
tunes including Please Don’t Make Fun of
the Disabled until the camera flits from a blissfully engrossed Brent to
the faces of the on-screen audience (at least, those who bothered to turn up)
or those of his bandmates valiantly rapping, plucking and drumming through the
embarrassment.
While the various gigs work as self-contained set pieces,
everything else in-between is classic Brent, his gurning laughter and po-faced
refusal of reason eliciting everything from reflective smirks, sudden bursts of
belly laughter and, of course, full-body cringing. A low-key breakdown in a
psychiatrist’s office is the epitome of Gervais’ creation, and a tattoo parlour
mishap transfigures the midway point between Slough and Reading from a mark on
the AA roadmap into a side-splitting piece of wordplay.
Yes, references to Slough are plentiful (and I think we can
agree that any Brent story would feel empty without them), but no-one should go
into this expecting a visit to the Wernham Hogg offices or appearances from
classic cast members. The ‘Sergio Giorigini’ jacket is back, and a comedy
character from Gervais’ XFM days is revived in toe-curling fashion, but there’s
an absence of overwrought pandering to nostalgia; a real breath-freshener in a
summer so irritably reliant on raiding your childhood toy box for inspiration.
The new characters such as Tom Bennett’s Nigel (a cubicle screwball who nurses
a slavish devotion to The Brentmeister General) and Ben Bailey Smith’s
ambitious and exasperated rapper, Dom, may not hold the same side-line interest
of Tim or Gareth, but the mere fact we’re getting entirely new creations in
lieu of rehashed material is reason enough to enjoy their company. Brent aside,
Dom is the only character to have a fully-fleshed out arc, also delivering
superb raps both in the midst of the endlessly quotable Equality Street and in a last-ditch attempt to break free from the
band.
No, you didn’t misread that; I did in fact claim that David
Brent, one of the most reliably one-note personalities in comedy actually develops. Sure, it’s a rather predictable
series of events, but the very last frame is a short but sweet adage to the
character that may require a little eye-drying. Maybe I’ve binge-watched the
entire original series too recently or perhaps I’m aching for a more
idiosyncratic outing for British comedy than the ho-hum, cameo-adorned sheen of
Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie, but I
felt very much at home watching Life on
the Road. In spite of its front-loaded laugh graph and the consistently,
deliberately dull Office-style
visuals lending a little less than a cinematic feel, it more than makes the
grade, causing any memory of Gervais’ failed Netflix feature, Special Correspondents, to evaporate on
contact.
