Starring: Eric Bana, Ricky Gervais, Vera Farmiga, Kelly Macdonald, America Ferrera, Kevin Pollak, Benjamin Bratt
Directed By: Ricky Gervais
I just don’t understand. Ricky Gervais is a blisteringly funny comedian, yet he wrote one of the least funny scripts imaginable. It’s just an awful script. The film literally ends with “it’s like the ending out of a movie”. Fucking seriously? The movie begins with some bullshit scene where we find out that Eric Bana is a journalist. He’s apparently a semi-celebrity, yet he walks into a crime scene impersonating an officer. If he was even a moderately well known journalist in his city, wouldn’t someone know who he was? Then, he has no idea his technician has a wife.
The plot revolves around Bana and Gervais fumbling an attempt to go to Ecuador, but losing their passports, and faking their correspondence from an apartment literally across the street. When shit gets serious, they fake their kidnapping, and shit gets more real. There is absolutely zero chemistry between Gervais and Bana, who both sleepwalk through the film. It’s odd that Gervais sleepwalks through a film he’s actually directing. You’d think he’d at least be invested in his own film. He lined up some rather great talent, and the only one who seems truly committed to the film. It’s sad, really, because she’s relegated to a fairly racist stereotype sidekick comedy role.
Netflix can do better than this. Adam Sandler’s comedies are better than this. No, seriously. If I had to recommend a film between this or The Ridiculous Six, I would actually recommend Sandler’s film over this, and that’s a problem. I had to fight the urge to turn the film off. It’s baffling that Netflix actually bothered to put their stamp on it, when they could have just buried this in their massive catalog for no one to see.
Dumb, pointless, pandering, and a waste of your time and everyones talent involved.
FINAL GRADE: D-
