Special Correspondents (2016)

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

An Exercise In Nonsense

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

Frank Bonneville (Eric Bana) is a NYC radio correspondent for Q365 News. He normally works with Ian Finch (Ricky Gervais) a sound engineer with an unhappy wife (Vera Farmiga). They get assigned to cover a rebel up rising in Ecuador, however a depressed Ian accidentally tosses their money, tickets, and passports instead of the letter he wrote to his wife. With Frank being on his last leg with the station, they opt to fake their presence in Ecuador while staying in the upstairs room of a Latino restaurant located directly across from the station. Frank manages to give convincing reports with Ian supplying background noise and the restaurant owners yelling out in Spanish.Their celebrity builds. Things get carried away....This is a light comedy that was fun to watch.Guide: F-word (two languages). No sex or nudity.

Like others have said: This is the kind of (sad ass?) comedy that Americans most often do not understand, because it is not uplifting and happy - thus the not fantastic rating on IMDb.Excellent movie, excellent story and excellent humor all the way. I'd rather watch this again than to watch some other random silly movie any day of the week, or something. Only Spinal Tap was more genius than this. And maybe a few other, that I can think of. But apart from those. Excellent.

It looks like some filmmakers are making deals with Netflix to dust down those rejected scripts or ideas from yesteryear and reheat them. The result as in Special Correspondents is that it turns out half baked.Eric Bana (Frank Bonneville) plays a cool dude radio news journalist who does whatever it takes to get a story. His boss assigns Bonneville to cover a rebel uprising in Ecuador. We might have to gloss over the fact how a local radio station has the resources to send journalists abroad.Ricky Gervais (Ian Finch) is the sound technician that Bonneville will take with him. Finch has just found out that his wife (Vera Farmiga) wants a divorce as he is leaving town and mistakenly throws their passports and airline tickets away. We also see previously that Bonneville has a one night stand with Farmiga as he does not know who she is married to.The two decide that they will hideout in New York and file news reports using sound effects to make out they are abroad. The trouble is not only do they then make up stories they end up faking their own kidnapping and Finch's wife makes public appearances to raise funds to have them both released even though the kidnappers have made no ransom demands.Gervais wrote and directed this banal film. The trouble is his lo-fi, fly in the wall documentary style of comedy which works on television is not suited for the medium of film. On film you rely on the quality of the story and the script has to be funny. Well the story has more plot holes than Swiss cheese. There is no record of these two leaving the country; they phone the radio station to file the stories which means their mobile phone records would have them located in New York. No journalists in Ecuador have seen them which would raise questions when they are kidnapped.Some of the plot is excruciatingly bad such as when the duo decide to go to Ecuador and end up being abducted in a rough bar somewhere in the jungle as they decide to take drugs and talk to a pretty woman rather than quickly get the hell out of there.The film wants to make cheap points on the shallowness of the American media and how Farmiga raises money and increases her celebrity which is self serving as she plans to keep the money for herself. However given how underwhelming the film is those points get lost.

completely wasted!Ricky Gervais... You had it, you used it, and now it's gone. Not funny at all, not interesting, not special, not eye-opening, not thoughtful, not anything positive to say about it.Simply put, a really bad movie.Sorry to say, but it's the truth!I can't even see the potential in it...Ricky, you need a Holiday and perhaps a real job to meet some real people... Get some new energy in you... This movie feels like you're burned out.