Special Correspondents is the latest film by Ricky Gervais. If you don’t know who Ricky Gervais is, you’ve been hiding under a Golden Globe shaped rock in Slough for the last few years.
Gervais writes and directs, as well as playing the lead role opposite Eric Bana. It follows the two as they miss their flight to Ecuador to cover a news story, and subsequently hide in an apartment pretending they went. Perhaps somewhat satirical of the state of journalism and the media, but any chance at hitting the point they were making seemed as accurate as a blind darts player with whiplash.
One of the things that might strike the audience first is that Gervais actually does a decent job with his acting. While he gained acclaim for his roles in Extras, Derek and The Office, his film career hasn’t had the exact same acclaim. Here, Gervais takes on the role of Ian Finch, a beaten down sound engineer, and every moment is believable. It helps, somewhat, that Eric Bana plays the role of journalist Frank Bonneville. The swagger he has and the chemistry between the two are what barely carries the film past the finishing line of being watchable. The only other cast member who does the film justice is Kelly Macdonald, who is underutilized by a horrifying amount.
The biggest criticism of Special Correspondents is that as a comedy film, it’s not actually funny. Not in the same way that other films try to be but miss the mark, or the jokes fall flat, it just seems that all the jokes were cut from the movie and they forgot to bill it as something else other than a comedy. Oh, unless you count immigrants being somewhat below average intelligence and not speaking perfect English, and, lest we forget, a man who enjoys comic books and action figures.
It’s a shame all these things were delved into in such a basic way, and detracted from any emotion we could have felt across the movie. In his other films such as Cemetery Junction, Gervais shows us that not only is he a talented director, but has plenty of heart, and that’s something that is missing in this film in abundance. One of the issues is that when they actually go to Ecuador, that brief fifteen minutes is completely more interesting than the rest of the film – leading one to wonder if the whole premise was flawed from the beginning. As with other cinematic efforts from Gervais, who is a wonderful writer, the writing itself is flawed when it comes to feature lengths (which, albeit, is ironic, because the Christmas specials for The Office and Extras were perfect).
Ultimately, this film feels like a completely passive experience. The whole cinematic effort washed over me like it was mixed in with the shower water. There is no reason to recommend this movie to anyone, but also, no reason to dissuade them if they want something in the background.
Netflix and Gervais had a lot of potential. But ultimately this felt like Gervais thought he could make a Woody Allen movie, but forgot to do one thing to the movie: make it good. There’s no doubt the viewing figures for this film will be high, but with a movie following David Brent on the way, one hopes that Gervais returns somewhat to his roots of ground breaking media rather than the audience wall breaking trying to escape, a la The Shawshank Redemption. Ricky Gervais will always be a genius for the work he’s previously done. But let’s hope that this is a low point and not marking the continuation of his career.
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