Review of Cemetery Junction (2010) by Peter D — 15 Oct 2010

Another cinematic misfire for Gervais. He needs to stay away from cinema and stick to sitcoms. This film is rubbish. For saying Gervais came from a working class background in the 1970s, none of this rings true at all.

The characters are such one-dimensional stereotypes. It all looks so glossy and shiny. The "factory" which Gervais and Tom Hughes work in looks so blatantly like a set, its just laughable. Its failure to convince is a suitable metaphor for the entire production.

None of the young leads look even remotely working class. Christian Cooke and Tom Hughes look like super-models. Cooke in particular looks so out of place in his "council estate flat" with his upper-class-tory-tennis-playing sweater and haircut.

Ralph Fiennes is such a pathetically "evil" boss. Everything has such a cartoon-like simplicity to it. There's no subtlety at all. All the misogyny and sexism, which its apparently exploring from that era, just feels completely arbitrary. There's also a lot of smutty puerile humour which is just pathetic.

I didn't even finish this film, it just angered me too much. Gervais and Merchant have completely lost whatever it was that made The Office good. I've completely given up expecting anything even half-decent from either of them.