Too much of everything

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

It's summer of 1973. Freddie Taylor (Christian Cooke) comes from working class suburb of Cemetery Junction. He doesn't want to follow his father (Ricky Gervais) into the factories. He takes a job selling life insurance from district manager Mr Kendrick (Ralph Fiennes) and Mike Ramsay (Matthew Goode). He has a cool friend Bruce Pearson (Tom Hughes) and an idiot friend Snork (Jack Doolan). Childhood acquaintance and his boss's daughter Julie Kendrick (Felicity Jones) returns to town and is now engaged to Mike Ramsay. Mrs Kendrick (Emily Watson) is the long suffering wife.Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant have mashed together a lot of coming-of-age stories for the setup of this movie. It's got great actors although the three male leads are unknown to me. That is its main drawback for the first half. It takes a little while for me to get involved with these friends. Then the movie take some interesting turns in the characters' journeys. It takes some digs at the stale British life. It's a bit uneven between broad comedy and tough social commentary. But I do like the effort it makes.

This was the film on late last night on BBC One, so it was one of those things that one just watches to pass an odd hour or so between the late-evening programmes and bedtime, without really demanding too much of oneself. However, it inevitably raised one of those half-forgotten aspects of British 1970s Popular Culture - the at-the-time ground-breaking BBC TV fly-on-the-wall documentary series 'The Family', set in a working class neighbourhood in nowhere else but Reading. I simply could not help humming the unforgettable signature tune of 'The Family' as I made my way upstairs to bed. I know I have only been on the 'Trivia' and the first page of the 'User Comments', but I am amazed that nobody has thought to mention this parallel, especially given that Gervais' 'The Office' was itself, essentially, filmed as a faux fly-on-the-wall documentary.As a sort of Northerner, by the way, (well a North MIDLANDER, at any rate!), it's interesting to see the South take for itself a little bit of the 'ownership' of Northern Soul in the night club scene. Maybe that, itself, raises the engaging matter of non-Northern Northern Soul back in the 1970s heyday. I suppose that, like 'The Family' exposed those living in more northern climes to the fact that there were such things as blue collar neighbourhoods in the apparently privileged provincial South and East, one didn't have to have lived in the North to have experienced the essentially blue collar-driven social scene that was Northern Soul....an antidote to 'SoulBoy' and its Stoke-on-Trent setting? Not a film to set the world alight, but one that raises a couple of intriguing questions, nevertheless.

I don't really know Gervais' work, so I didn't really have any expectations. I also can't comment on the cultural aspects, so I watched it just as a story.The problem was that it was marketed as a comedy. When I watched it as such, I didn't like it at all. Can't say it particularly made me laugh. But I absolutely loved the last third, I just love such emotional scenes. (Even if it's clichéd, as some reviewers complained the film often is, if it's done well, it doesn't matter.) So I went back and watched it again immediately, this time as a drama, and I liked it way better.The cut glass bowl scene literally made my mouth fall open, it was so brilliantly done, and I found Bruce's opening of the two bottles so moving it gave me the shivers. Definitely not a comedy, and I will definitely watch it again.

Ricky Gervais made his film directorial debut with The Invention of Lying, and this is the first feature to be directed by him and his co-creator of The Office and Extras, Stephen Merchant, I had no idea what it was about, but I was prepared. Basically it is 1973 in the British, Reading suburban town of Cemetery Junction, where three friends, Freddie Taylor (Christian Cooke), Bruce Pearson (Tom Hughes) and Paul aka Snork (Jack Doolan) spend their time joking around, drinking a lot, fighting with each other and some others, and trying their luck chasing girls. Freddie wants to leave his working class life as an insurance salesman in the town, charismatic Bruce works in a factory and has a difficult relationship with his father, and Snork is the lovable loser who works on the railway station but has no luck finding a girlfriend. Freddie finds himself a new job as a door-to-door salesman, and this leads him into being reunited with old school sweetheart Julie (Felicity Jones), coincidentally his boss's daughter engaged to his top seller friend. As time passes the other friends have changes in their life and have to make some tough and sometimes difficult decisions, eventually coming to the conclusion moving on is the best choice. In the end though the only one who truly escapes is Freddie, as Bruce decides to stay and work things out with his father and a working life, and Snork finds himself a girl who likes him for what he is, so the final scene sees Freddie leaving on the train with Julie. Also starring Emily Watson as Mrs. Kendrick, Matthew Goode as Mike Ramsay, Ralph Fiennes as Mr. Kendrick, Gervais as Mr. Taylor, Julia Davis as Mrs. Taylor, Steve Speirs as Sgt. Wyn Davies, Burn Gorman as PC Renwick, The Mother's Anne Reid as Freddie's Gran, Merchant as Dougie Boden, Mike & Angelo's Katy Murphy as Mrs. Waring and look out for Karl Pilkington. The three adolescent leads all give good performances, Doolan being possibly the most appealing, Gervais gets his moments on screen, and Fiennes does alright with his time too, it is more dramatic than funny, but a likable comedy drama. Worth watching!