Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Netflix’s Special Correspondents is a disappointment on many levels. The premise holds a great deal of potential. Ricky Gervais and Eric Bana play a radio news reporter and his on-air talent, who end up, via contrivance, having to fake a first-hand report of a rebellion in Ecuador, all while holed up in the apartment of a married couple (America Ferrera, Raul Castillo). Have you seen Wag the Dog? Imagine Wag the Dog with less of a point of view and no energy. That’s Special Correspondents.
Gervais’ strength as a comedian was never his timeliness. The Office and Extras, his two finest contributions to culture, were more human comedy than political commentary. They had a fine ear for social dynamics and professional mores. But Gervais’ attempts at any kind of cultural/political/media commentary have never shared the kind of sharpness of relatability of his best work. Special Correspondents lies in a no man’s land between the kind of dark, acidic, insightful comedy that would have said something about today’s media climate and a light, goofy, unserious farce. Had the film been at either end of the spectrum, it might have been able to work with the fact that radio journalism seems like the least relevant area of the media to critique. The classlessness of doing a goof on ISIS-style ransom videos might have felt edgy and vital. And the gag where Gervais’ opportunistic on-screen wife (played by Vera Farmiga) records a faux support ballad for the not-captured journalists would have felt not quite as egregiously warmed-over.
Farmiga is honestly one of our best actresses. An Oscar nominee (for Up in the Air), she’s shown time and again that she’s one of the most exciting and committed screen presences we have. In this movie, she’s saddled with a stock, unsympathetic role and then left to twist in the wind through some incredibly hoary setups. It bears repeating: the treacly ballad of support/charity project! How many times have we seen that? Certainly The Simpsons was on this tip decades ago …
And honestly, what’s one more bit of blatant thieving from Wag the Dog?
Farmiga is better than this. She’s better than warmed over faithless wives and half-conceived social commentary. She’s not the only one. Special Correspondents has even less to do for Kelly Macdonald. While Gervais and Bana are busy trying to find a workable comedic tone in scenes with armed rebels, Macdonald waits back at the office and frets. It’s the mark of a truly uninspired project, when the best actors involved have to just stand around and fret. It’s not the first time Gervais has squandered talent. The Invention of Lying gathered the likes of Tina Fey, Louis CK, Jeffrey Tambor, Rob Lowe, Jennifer Garner, and Jonah Hill, and while I’m sure there were less memorable movies in the Aughts, by their very definition I cannot remember them.
