David Brent: Life on the Road review: Ricky Gervais plays his excruciating old hits one more time
Ricky Gervais may have captured the zeitgeist with The Office, but he’s reminded us often enough in the 13 years since it finished that it’s a bar he’s not always capable of hitting. This movie spin-off shows he can still play those toe-curling greatest hits, even if his film isn’t exactly brimming with new ideas.
Now pushing 50, David Brent now cuts an absurdly tragic figure, still believing he might sign a record deal, unable to imagine a life beyond Reading and Slough. Now a tampon salesman, he cashes in his pension to fund a “comeback” tour for his band Foregone Conclusion, consisting of a series of gigs within spitting distance of his house. What follows, of course, is a series of public humiliations, with Brent falling gloriously short of even the palest imitation of the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle.
The character is the same as ever, but the world in which he lives is a meaner, lonelier place. There was always a tragic element to David Brent but it’s double underlined here, fleshed out by the mention of his history of depression.
That’s not to say there aren’t hilarious scenes to cut through the gloom: the rendition of his song Equality Street, played in a duet with his mixed-race band-mate, is snort-out-loud, watch-through-your-fingers stuff.
It’s not without its problems, however. As in the original series (and Extras and Derek and pretty much everything else Gervais has made) he continues to squeeze mileage out of being uncomfortable around disabled people, which feels more tired now than ever. Gervais’s jokes are funniest when they point inward: his perfectly-timed verbal ticks, those indrawn laughs that can’t possibly fill the silence following an off-colour joke. At his best, Brent is the physical embodiment of that feeling you get the morning after the work Christmas party.
There’s a tendency with spin-offs of beloved sitcoms to pander to the fans, giving the character too much of what they want, letting them walk triumphantly into the sunset. But this was never going to be the fate of David Brent; the closest he gets is a moment of catharsis, a genuine tear-jerker that shows Gervais’ writing at its most human.
Life on the Road exists not because Gervais had one last David Brent story he desperately needed to get off his chest, but because somebody figured there was enough left in the nostalgia bank after movies by Alan Partridge and the Ab Fab Girls. But Brent remains Ricky Gervais at his excruciating best: it’s the rousing final farewell nobody asked for.