The Office was genius, it perfectly developed and concluded the character in 2 seasons and the specials. My personal favourite was Extras, a spot on, brilliantly funny and original follow up to The Office. Ever since then it's been down hill, Life's too Short was a boring rehash of using celebrities parodying themselves again, Derek was largely rubbish, and now this.
I sat straight faced throughout the whole thing which made me very sad as I genuinely love Ricky Gervais, but this is pretty awful, maybe as bad as Special Correspondents. Brent is no longer the character he was in The Office, he is a level of sad sack that is too unbelievable to be true, he is too unaware to be true and so it's just not funny at all.
Brent in The Office was believable, he also showed a humanity that made the writing so much better (Merchant and Gervais may work better as a team, although Life's too short is an example where it does't work.) he was someone who had flaws that were observational in the sense that anyone who has worked in an Office may have seen an amalgam of those characteristics in people they worked with. In this movie that has gone, in its place, poor cringe inducing moments that were not in the same class, terrible songs that no self aware human would actually write and sadly, a complete lack of laughs.
Ultimately it's a bit like a kid who said one funny thing, and because everyone laughed kept saying it until no one found it funny anymore. We've seen it all before and it was way funnier then.
I sat straight faced throughout the whole thing which made me very sad as I genuinely love Ricky Gervais, but this is pretty awful, maybe as bad as Special Correspondents. Brent is no longer the character he was in The Office, he is a level of sad sack that is too unbelievable to be true, he is too unaware to be true and so it's just not funny at all.
Brent in The Office was believable, he also showed a humanity that made the writing so much better (Merchant and Gervais may work better as a team, although Life's too short is an example where it does't work.) he was someone who had flaws that were observational in the sense that anyone who has worked in an Office may have seen an amalgam of those characteristics in people they worked with. In this movie that has gone, in its place, poor cringe inducing moments that were not in the same class, terrible songs that no self aware human would actually write and sadly, a complete lack of laughs.
Ultimately it's a bit like a kid who said one funny thing, and because everyone laughed kept saying it until no one found it funny anymore. We've seen it all before and it was way funnier then.