Those expecting Life on the Road to be a movie about the original British mockumentary The Office will be disappointed – Ricky Gervais has said so in several interviews and social media posts. Life on the Road is, however, is a movie about David Brent, the iconic manager from The Office played by Gervais.
In The Office, which was aired on BBC in 2000, David Brent fumbled and mumbled as the office manager at the Slogh branch of the paper manufacturing company Wernem Hogg. In Life On The Road, Brent is a travelling salesman who journeys through the south-east of England selling toiletries and women’s hygiene products and manages a musician on the side.
“Who does your tampons?” David Brent asks a potential customer, a middle-aged man at an office he’s visiting, It is a funny line from the show that is repeated in the movie, and fans of The Office will laugh at the connection as much as they will at the scene.
But something is not quite right with the movie, which is showing on Netflix. The storyline, written by Gervais, lacks something. The creative inputs and co-writing abilities of Stephen Merchant, perhaps?
In Life on the Road, David Brent decides to cash in on his pension and take another shot at becoming a rock star. Brent is managing emerging rapper Dom Johnson (played by Ben Bailey Smith) and manages to worm his way into his recording sessions.
Brent wants to revive his old band Foregone Conclusion, but everyone is either too old or married. So Brent pays session musicians to tour with him and Johnson. The other crew members seem repulsed by Brent and don’t want to hang out with him. He pays for a tour bus but is asked to drive his own car instead to seven different venues that are a few kilometers apart.
It might appear comical, but Gervais’s writing seems conflicted here. It’s not funny enough, and the sad and emotional bits are too many and feel too forced.
In The Office, the characters were sweet, humorous and innocent, and they felt genuine. The diversity of the characters, from Finchie and Tim to Dawn to Gareth, accentuated the funny side of David Brent. In Life On The Road, no character’s role is two-dimensional enough to compliment Brent’s tragicomic journey. The cringeworthiness is there, alongside genuinely rib-tickling moments, such as when two well-endowed women go back to Brent’s hotel room to spend the night. A photo-shoot is reminiscent of the episode in season two of The Office, the one in which Brent tries different positions as he is being photographed backstage.
Perhaps Life on the Road suffers from the unreasonably high level of expectations that fans have about a movie based on the best character from The Office. It will never be good enough for its fans all over the world.