Culture

Directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant
Coming soon to DVD
3/5
   Quite a surprise from the Gervais/Merchant team, this film actually wants to be taken seriously. You wonder if earnest is a good choice for these guys to make; after all, their success has been in comedy. Cemetary Junction is a coming-of-age story set in the seventies about a cute, young, idealistic chap, Freddie (Christian Cooke) from small-town Cemetery Junction. He hates his family’s working-class life, and dreams of becoming a rich life insurance salesman. His buddies are Bruce (Tom Hughes) and Snork (Jack Doolan). Bruce is a confident kid, off-the-rails, angry, nearing alcoholic; but he, too, believes he will do better than his father has before him, and in fact blames his father for all his problems. Snork is happily unaware of all this angst: he’s the ‘loveable freak’ of the film, the socially retarded guy who is more interested in vampire pornography than anything else. Freddie and Bruce seem to be on the way to disillusionment, but in steps enlightened young Julie (Felicity Jones) who suggests to Freddie there might be more of the world to see than Cemetery Junction. The creativity you’d expect from the creators is sadly lacking: none of these characters or their storylines are any different from the old formula. Something about the film does make it fun to watch, though. There’s a charming gawkiness to it, touches of real life that feel autobiographical. And there is the characteristic painful comedy we know and love, usually focused around Snork. There’s clever black humour, too, to help us swallow a bleak portrayal of working-class life. But, overall, the famed comic geniuses were, it feels, a bit lazy with this movie.