Skip to content
David Brent: Life On The Road shows that when it comes to his character from The Office, Ricky Gervais is having the last laugh. And it’s on us.
Gervais once used to make fresh, original comedy programmes. The first two series of The Office were fantastic. Then, after his character was sacked, the 2003 Christmas Special showed the man pursuing his dream of becoming a rock star, and the fickle finger of fame that petered out. In 2013, he made a Comic Relief sketch, where David Brent sang a rap song called Equality Street, with Doc Brown. In 2016, he’s made a film which largely treads the same water as the 2003 Christmas Special and he also sings a rap song. Called Equality Street. With Doc Brown. He plays rapper Dom Johnson (yes, Don Johnson… geddit? Well, I goddit in 2005 when I saw Bill Murray in the brilliant Broken Flowers, his character being named Don Johnston.
So, if you thought only Independence Day: Resurgence would rehash old content, then Ricky Gervais has done it too, sucking on Satan’s shilling in a bid to get more fame for precious little work. What a shame.
I did attempt to go into this, hoping it could recapture some of The Office‘s magic, but like Brent stating that this was “one last push to make it in this business”, this film quickly felt of similar flat desperation.
What we often get is very dated humour after 15 years since his famous sitcom first began, but that’s meant to be the joke. Yes, the joke is that we’re not meant to be laughing. Well, bar two laughs (including one big one) and some slight titters (he’s been cashing in pensions to fund his journey, stating “some are worth as much now as what I’ve put into them”), he’s succeeded with this. Had he made this film by 2006 at the latest, it could still work.
Originally, Martin Freeman, Mackenzie Crook and Lucy Davis were working alongside the character, but they’re (wisely for them) nowhere to be seen. They’re making US sitcoms or struggling in low-budget Hollywood movies like Pirates of the Caribbean, The Hobbit and Wonder Woman. Now, Gervais is, like Brent, clearly wondering at what point his life forked the wrong road because he hasn’t reached those dizzy heights (albeit should be making enough money out of films like Muppets Most Wanted and the forthcoming The Wind In The Willows), yet still wants to buzz round the UK loud enough for us to hear, a bit like James Corden, now presenting a late-night US talk show, yet still forcing crappy insurance adverts upon us.
All that said, I can understand Gervais wanting to portray a character determined to be a rock star, since the man himself was one half of long-forgotten ’80s pop duo, Seona Dancing, who I never heard of at the time, and only once Office success had occurred, but their two songs – More To Lose and Bitter Heart (above and below) – are actually bloody wonderful and I have the extended versions on my MP3 player and, if these didn’t already exist, you’d think they’d been recreated as great ’80s-sounding song, a la Sing Street.
Of the (intentionally) terrible songs in this film, the one I had a real problem with was “Don’t Make Fun of the Disabled”. It takes a lot to make me take offence at something that’s meant to be comedy, but it was just downright offensive and while I get that’s the character’s ‘schtick’, Gervais knows better and of course the reason he still puts it in is because David Brent is a character that is so un-self-aware that he picks on fat people even though – through doctored photographs – his character got fat inbetween now and when we last saw him. And that’s before we even get to the rape joke. And the racist jokes about Irish and Chinese. Yes, while David Brent just used to make basic crude humour, as well as occasionally trying not to be offensive about disabilities, but since we last saw him, he’s regressed back to the ’70s.
There are some plusses to this movie, however:
- Diane Morgan (best known as Philomena Cunk from a variety of Charlie Brooker ‘wipe’ shows) as PR lady Bryony
- Roisin Conaty and Ashley McGuire (both best known as Jo and Shakira in Channel 4’s Man Down) as two accidental groupies
- the lovely Mandeep Dhillon (best known for BBC3’s Some Girls)
- a tattoo shop sketch
- and… it’s not the Ghostbusters reboot.
I think I’ll struggle to find a worse film all year. Well, there was the Dad’s Army reboot.
While I did hear a few titters from the couple a few rows back, there was another couple in front of me, the female half stepping out for 10 minutes, just half-an-hour into this 96-minute movie. I presume she’d nipped out for a cig, but then returned with more snacks for her and her boyfriend. Clearly, this film made such an impression on her that she didn’t mind paying £15 for the reclining seats only to miss part of what she had come to see.
Other than that, Brent continues to be so unliked that he has to pay his band, Foregone Conclusion, to have a drink with him, similar to Extras when he had to pay £60 to sit on the posh seats, only to realise they’re the SAME seats, and that STILL no-one cared who his character was.
There was also a moment towards the end (which I won’t describe here) which Jason Solomons started to give chapter and verse about on the BBC News Film Review, and I had to mute it, although I’d heard too much (give away something about a film’s end? really???)
Beyond that, it’s got some interesting ideas about having to try something because if you don’t, then you’d regret NOT trying more than you would regret trying and failing. Unfortunately, while that works for Brent, it doesn’t work for Gervais.
Go to page 2 for more thoughts about this film…
Making TV series into big screen films is all the rage, these days. As well as the aforementioned Dad’s Army movie, Alan Partridge was resurrected in 2013 for the big screen in Alpha Papa, and for me, it got right everything that I’m Alan Partridge Series 2 got wrong, and restored my faith in the character – something which continued this year with Alan Partridge’s Scissored Isle on Sky Atlantic. However, in the case of Partridge movie, it’s clear the writing is brilliantly honed down until there is not a moment of the 90 minutes that goes unfilled with brilliance.
Now, if we had big screen versions of Man Down or Philomena Cunk, I *would* be interested!
With David Brent: Life in the Road, as well as the fact he appears to mirror Partridge in rolling the opening credits over a motorway driving scene, Gervais is clearly missing Stephen Merchant. They worked wonders with The Office and Extras, and also applied a fair amount of magic to Cemetery Junction. With Brent this time, it’s all written and directed by Gervais.
Being a rock star is David Brent’s pet project, same as Ricky Gervais having one last hurrah with Brent is his own pet project. However, reality mirrors fiction in terms of its success with this reviewer. Similarly, Brent is often ‘too cool for school’. Unfortunately, Gervais is the same. When most guests appear on the three-hour Sunday Brunch magazine programmme on Channel 4, they’re there for the start at 9.30am, except him, not turning up until the show was half over. He also left before it finished, leaving it to Tim Lovejoy to break the news, making it sound like he had somewhere else to be… but on a Sunday?? I doubt it. Still, he was dominating the show too much, so it was better for him to leave.
In addition, Gervais has dismissed criticism that he’s “milking” the David Brent character because between The Office and this film, there’s only around nine hours of Brent ever made. That’s true, but when this film is basically rehashing his 2003 The Office Christmas Special, he IS rehashing it!
There’s a couple of touching moments in this film that I wasn’t expecting, and which were quite sweet, but beyond that, if you saw the trailer, did it make you want to hear to the cinema for another 90 minutes of the character?
What makes it completely unrealistic is that while there’s a couple of moments of self-doubt in Brent, when the self-denial is proving too much for him and you really start to believe that this is a man who is just not getting the message about his behaviour… we also had those back in The Office, such as the day he got fired, while dressed as an ostrich. And again, he tries to chat up women in his office, yet just leaves them bemused with his antics. And again, he still think’s he’s a boss, even though now, he’s just a rep who’s answerable to a boss. So, any normal person would’ve learned from that at the time, not still be goofing around at 55 years of age. I guess that’s where suspension of disbelief comes in.
I’ll say, watch it if you really enjoyed The Office and have a passing interest in seeing how David Brent might be doing today, but I can’t recommend it as a big screen experience. For that, check out Suicide Squad (much better than a lot of the reviews would have you believe), Jason Bourne (the best Bourne since the first one) or Star Trek Beyond (the rebooted franchise finally heading into warp speed).
In the days before watching this film, I had two dreams about it. One was that I went to see it and walked out after an hour, going to the toilet, then having a wander around the cinema, then realising I’d left the auditorium without realising! I’m not normally that harsh a critic!
I also had a second one, the night before seeing this, where Little Mix had also done a (different) song called Equality Street, and it was coincidence that they’d released their single just as the film was coming out. I could be a smart arse and say that my dream self was right in the first one, but then I rarely give up on a movie, as I figure there must be SOME reason why it’s been made, and I’d still want to have seen this, just to see how it turned out.
And as for my continuing end credit adventures. Sadly, no different than the worse case scenario: The credits began, the side lights (low during trailers and adverts) came on bright, the cleaner switched on the ‘nuclear blast white’ cleaning lights, the other four audience members left, as did the cleaner, and I was left on my own with the fallout, unable to read the end credits properly.
You might think I’d be wanting to race out of there given how bad the film was, but you never know if there are post-credit sequences to come…
But now I know…
There is not.
David Brent: Life On The Road is available to pre-order on Blu-ray and DVD, and you can also buy the Soundtrack CD right now. Also, click on the poster for the full-size version.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 96 minutes
Studio: Entertainment One
Cinema: Vue, Lowry, Salford Quays
Year: 2016
Format: 1.85:1
Released: August 19th 2016
Rating: 1.5/10
Director: Ricky Gervais
Producers: Ricky Gervais and Charlie Hanson
Screenplay: Ricky Gervais
Cast:
David Brent: Ricky Gervais
Pauline: Jo Hartley
Dom Johnson: Doc Brown
Foregone Conclusion drummer: Andy Burrows
Foregone Conclusion bassist: Steve Clarke
Foregone Conclusion keyboardist/guitarist: Michael Clarke
Foregone Conclusion guitarist Stu Monkford: Stuart Wilkinson
Dan, Brent’s road manager: Tom Basden
Nigel: Tom Bennett
Karen Pasharar: Mandeep Dhillon
Serena Wilson: Abbie Murphy
Bryony: Diane Morgan
Brent’s therapist: Nina Sosanya
Jezza: Andrew Brooke
Club groupies: Roisin Conaty and Ashley McGuire
Pog: Alexander Arnold
Miriam Clarke (HR Manager): Rebecca Gethings
Ents Manager: Oliver Maltman
Sandra: Stacha Hicks
A&R Man: Michael Keat
Shocked audience member: Olivia Quinn
Wolfman: Joshua Ferdinand
Vincenzo: Thomas Kadman
Engineer: Nathan Dean Williams
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.
| 1 | 2 |