Review of David Brent: Life on the Road (2016) by David B — 01 Sep 2017

David Brent, the (anti)hero of BBC's legendary comedy series The Office" is back again, with a proper feature-length movie for the first time, distributed in most of the world as Netflix Original.

It's written and directed by Ricky Gervais who pulls no punches humiliating his famous character further, who's still on his road to fame as a singer.

Gervais has also written and performed a bunch of songs for Brent, and although they are supposed to be horrible (aren't they?), I actually liked all of them. Some are pretty memorable even outside the context of the movie.

But man oh man, is this a difficult watch or what, even if you are used to (British) comedies which always try to mete out as much disgrace to their main characters as possible.

Of course, Gervais has always been very fond of that but Life on the Road" feels like new high or something - or new low if you please.

Watching it gets as difficult as comedies can be... probably. Brent's life is so painfully awkward that you just gotta feel for the poor guy. At the same time, Gervais has figured out exactly how to make him so untolerable and socially graceless that you wouldn't want to be in the same room with someone like Brent, especially in work environment.

I know creating this kind of tension is the whole point here, but it just depressed the hell out of me. In its own right, it is well done but hardly recommendable for anybody outside the Gervais die-hard fans circle.

If you would like to know what Brent did after The Office" and how did he fare as a rock star, then you'll just have to check this out. For others, it may be interesting as (yet another) excursion into the mind of acerbic comedy mastermind Ricky Gervais. Just prepared that you'll feel low afterwards.