Let me preface this by saying I'm a massive Gervais fan. I'm seeing him live (for the second time) in a few weeks time, and I'm a true disciple of the XFM shows, the podcasts, The Office, Extras (to a lesser extent), and I even felt mostly positive about Life's Too Short. But honestly, it just makes me sad that Gervais has resurrected a character, and a premise, from a fifteen year old show, to mine it for extra comedy, and frankly, it felt like a corpse of its former self.

Gervais can still find it in him to move people, and I wouldn't argue that his observations and witticisms are without merit - they can be profound. But this was like sitting through a public humiliation, like watching a masochist self-flagellate and then asking for an applause at the end.

The feel-good commentary from his sound engineer and the abrupt decision by his band mates that they like Brent, and they would like to hang out with him socially, as well as the incomprehensible love interest that's thrust into The Office environment, feel too at odds with the framing of the whole film - they're undeserved when the film has gone out of its way to make him so unbearable, so intolerable, even using talking heads interviews to describe how unpleasant he is to be around. Gervais likes to wrap things up in a neat bow, but here it felt unnaturally forced and contrived.

He salvaged some scraps from The Office, paid a few people very well to work with him to produce the whole lot, and then shipped a flop. Ironically, perhaps, exactly the storyline of the film...