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SPECIAL CORRESPONDENTS
April 29, 2016  | By David Bianculli

Netflix, 3:00 a.m. ET

 

PREMIERE: This Netflix movie premiere, written, directed by and starring Ricky Gervais, is based on a 2009 French comedy, Envoyes Tres Speciaux, but is adapted and updated to fit Gervais’ comedy styles and rhythms. He plays a nebbishy radio producer teamed up with a glamorous, vain radio reporter, who together are dispatched to cover a possible coup in Ecuador. When their passports and other travel papers and cash are accidentally trashed on the way to the airport, the two decide to hole up in hiding and fake their war reports, hidden safely near their New York radio headquarters. None of it makes any credible sense if you examine too closely, but Gervais, as always, casts his projects with people who are enjoyable to watch. Eric Bana plays the egotistical radio reporter (do those still exist?), and the women get the best roles: Vera Farmiga from Bates Motel as Gervais’s opportunistic and unfaithful wife, Kelly Macdonald from Boardwalk Empire as his empathic co-worker, and America Ferrera from Ugly Betty as a dim but well-meaning co-conspirator. It’s a rather slight film, and predicable, but still pleasant and entertaining.

 
 
 
 
 
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