DVD Review: Cemetery Junction

Cemetery Junction ***
Directed by: Ricky Gervais & Stephen Merchant.
Written By: Ricky Gervais & Stephen Merchant.
Starring: Christian Cooke (Freddie Taylor), Tom Hughes (Bruce Pearson), Jack Doolan (Snork), Felicity Jones (Julie), Ricky Gervais (Mr. Taylor), Ralph Fiennes (Mr Kendrick), Matthew Goode (Mike Ramsay), Steve Speirs (Sgt. Wyn Davies), Anne Reid (Freddie's Gran), Julia Davis (Mrs Taylor), Emily Watson (Mrs Kendrick).

Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant are responsible for two of the greatest TV shows of the last decade - The Office and Extras. In both shows, they showed they were masters at awkward comedy – the shows that make us laugh, and yet are at times almost painful to watch because of the humiliation up there on the screen. So it comes as quite as a surprise that their first feature film together is Cemetery Junction – a sweet, funny, affable coming of age movie set in the 1970s. There are a few moments when we can see the normal style of Gervais and Merchant peaking through in the film, but overall this is a departure for them. And while it is hardly the masterwork that the short seasons of The Office or Extras were, the film deserved a better fate than being unceremoniously dumped straight to DVD in North America.

The film takes place in 1973, in the small British town of Cemetery Junction, where almost everyone works in factory. It centers on three young men in their early 20s – Freddie (Christian Cooke) wants more out of life than working alongside his father (Gervais) as a grease monkey and has become a door to door insurance salesman working for Mr. Kendrick (Ralph Fiennes), a no nonsense man who came from the same neighborhood, but has made a success of himself – and looks down on everyone who hasn’t. Bruce (Tom Hughes) is a rebel without a cause (he even wears the same red jacket James Dean had), working in a factory, angry at his father who he sees as lazy, and getting into fights constantly for no real reason. The third is Snork (Jack Doolan), the lovable, pudgy loser of the group who seems to be drifting aimlessly and is happy that way.

Cemetery Junction is not really an original movie – we have seen countless filmmakers revisit their earlier years in these kind of nostalgic trips back in time. But the film is extremely well written by Gervais and Merchant – at times quite funny (Gervais and Anne Reid, who plays his mother bicker hilariously every time they are onscreen together), but overall quite poignant and charming as well. Sure, they are looking back at their past through rose colored glasses, but doesn’t everyone. They capture that real sense of impending adulthood of these three kids who don’t really want to grow up, but have to. And surrounding those three, they have a superior supporting cast – not just Fiennes, who is wonderful as a very boring, yet somewhat cruel man, but also Matthew Goode as the next Fiennes, Felicity Jones as the girl Freddie likes, despite the fact that she is Fiennes’ daughter, and Goode’s fiancée, and perhaps best of all Emily Watson as Fiennes quiet, long suffering wife who hits all the right notes.

Cemetery Junction is a step into a different terrain for Gervais and Merchant, and for the most part they pull it off. If you didn’t know it was them behind the camera, you probably would not guess it was them. I admire them for stretching, yet at the same time hope they now make a movie more in their regular vein. When you are better than pretty much everyone else in the world at something, why do something else?

Movie Review: The Invention of Lying

The Invention of Lying ***
Directed By: Ricky Gervais & Matthew Robinson.

Written By: Ricky Gervais & Matthew Robinson.

Starring: Ricky Gervais (Mark Bellison), Jennifer Garner (Anna McDoogles), Jonah Hill (Frank), Louis C.K. (Greg), Jeffrey Tambor (Anthony), Fionnula Flanagan (Martha Bellison), Rob Lowe (Brad Kessler), Tina Fey (Shelley), Donna Sorbello (Anna's Mother), Martin Starr (Waiter #1), Jason Bateman (Doctor), Christopher Guest (Nathan Goldfrappe), Edward Norton (Cop).

Ricky Gervais is one of the funniest men in the world right now. His two TV shows, The Office and Extras, rank among the best shows of the decade. They mix humor with an awkwardness that is hard to watch sometimes. He specializes in characters that are not really sympathetic – the completely delusional boss in The Office, and the extra that becomes a self hating star – and somehow makes us like them. They aren’t good people, but we feel their pain anyway. His genius in television has never been fully utilized in movies however. And while The Invention of Lying, a film we also co-wrote and co-directed, comes closest to bringing his style to the screen, it still doesn’t quite reach the heights he is capable of. Still, I have to admit, it is funnier than just about than about 95% of most mainstream comedies.

In the film, Gervais plays Mark Bellison, a lowly screenwriter in a world where no one can lie. What this means for movies then, is that they all consist of one man sitting in a chair and reading the history of a past event. If you cannot lie, you cannot act, because in pretending to be someone else, you would be lying. Bellison is assigned the lowly 1300s at his job, and cannot find a suitable subject other than The Black Plague, and that would never make a good movie. His secretary (Tina Fey) loathes her job, and tells him this on a regular basis. His boss Anthony (Jeffrey Tambor) has told him that he is working up the nerve to fire him, so to expect that to happen any day now. His chief rival Brad (Rob Lowe) tells him that he hates him, but is also slightly intimidate by him, because he doesn’t quite understand him. His neighbor (Jonah Hill) tells him every morning how he failed to commit suicide the night before. And the woman he has had a crush on for years, Anna (Jennifer Garner) went on a date with him, told him that he enjoyed herself, although they could never actually date, because she does not want her children to be fat with stubby noses. Such is Mark’s life.

But then something amazing happens. Mark says something that wasn’t. He doesn’t know how else to describe it. He goes into the bank and asks for $800 when in fact he knows he only has $300 in his account. The teller assumes that there has to be a mistake, because Mark has to tell the truth, so she gives him the money. Soon he discovers he can use this newfound power to get whatever he wants. Everyone just trusts everything he says, so he do whatever he wants. He and Anna become friends, although she still rejects his advances because he is not a suitable genetic match. That Brad though, he is good looking, and even if he is kind of ass, her kids would be good looking.

When Mark’s mother is dying, she tells him that she is scared of what will happen when she goes. This is a world without religion, without the hope of an afterlife. That is, until Mark tells her how she goes to a great big mansion when she dies. He is overheard, and soon, everyone wants to know all about this “Man in the Sky” that communicates directly to Mark, and only to Mark. Thus religion is born, of course, out of a lie. If no one could lie, then no one could talk about things they didn’t know were true, which means there is no concept of God or an afterlife. An interesting idea, eh?

The film is very funny throughout. Gervais is a gifted comedic performer, and like many great comedians, he has his comic persona that he plays to perfection. While Mark maybe more likable than his characters in The Office or Extras, he is not quite the hero we usually see in movies like this. And Gervais has surrounded himself with some of the best comedic actors in the world, many giving little more than hilarious cameos. The film is just plain funny.

It also has some flaws. At a certain point, Garner’s persistence about how she and Mark could never be together because of their “genetic differences” goes from being truthful, to being shallow. We never see in her the same loving, caring nature that Mark somehow sees. She is pretty, sure, but is there anything else there? Garner plays the role as written quite effectively, but there could have been something more there. Also, while I appreciated the direction the movie went in when it introduced the concept of religion, it deserves a little more depth in its exploration.

But those are minor flaws that do not derail the enjoyment of the movie. The most telling moment in the film, in regards to Gervais’ career ambition, could be right at the beginning before a single line of dialogue is spoken, or even an image appears on screen. The movie opens with beginning credits that use the exact font style that Woody Allen always uses. Do not tell me that I am reading too much into this, because Allen’s insistence on these credits has become a running gag, and I do not think that I have ever seen the same style in anyone else’s film. If it’s true that Gervais would like to become the next Woody Allen, then on the basis of The Invention of Lying, he has a long way to go, and yet, I feel that he is on the right track.