If you tippex out all memory of Ricky Gervais, file The Office in a tray marked “Pending” and come to David Brent: Life On The Road with eyes as fresh as the ruby-slippered Dorothy’s in The Merry Old Land Of Oz, then what you’ll find is a film more tragic than comedic with a few flashes of near-the-knuckle brilliance (including a song entitled “Please don’t make fun of the disabled” which rhymes those who are “mental in the head” with “mental in the legs”) and a central character who is to be pitted more than pilloried as he blows 20 grand of private pensions in 21 days on what he calls “one last push to see if I can make it in the music business”. The answer to which is a resounding no!

Disgruntled with his lot as a humble tampon seller and having had his teenage ambitions of becoming a pop star reawakened by a visit from The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come in the shape of the very much alive Alexander O’Neal who told him in a dream “You have got what it takes”, Brent enlists the support of several reluctant session musicians and rapper-on-the-rise Dom Johnson (Doc Brown) to form the appropriately named Foregone Conclusion and tour a series of venues near his home town of Slough which he describes in one song as “More convenient than a Tesco Express / Close to Windsor but the property’s less.”

Anything that can go wrong does: no one turns up; Brent has to follow the tour bus in his car because there’s not enough room; the band won’t join him for a post-show drink unless he slips them an additional £25 an hour each; a promotional interview with a zany radio presenter turns into an excruciating game of “Pie or Sausage?”; the letter “R” falls from his surname on a dressing room door leaving “Bent”; a group of rowdy students book him for an 80s revival gig called Shite Night; and to top it all off, he shoots a fat girl in the face with a t-shirt gun. The list like the risqué setlist goes on, including a memorable toe-tapper about a blind orphan with a terminal illness!

Sure, the repetitive nature of the plot (gig and fall from grace, followed by gig and fall from grace) lacks zip the longer the film goes on. And at times it’s hard to tell where Gervais the performer stops and the character of Brent starts as the latter undergoes a series of sudden transformations from uber-confident to broken man and evil stare to puppy eyes. But there is much to like, particularly the finale, which is surprisingly moving as Brent philosophises on the fleeting nature of fame and happiness and comes to the conclusion that (to paraphrase Alfred Lord Tennyson): “’Tis better to have tried and lost than never to have tried at all.”

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Peter Callaghan
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