Cemetery Junction

Essentially what we have here is a nostalgia piece. Three lads in their early
twenties live in a bucolic but tedious suburb of Reading. And because there's
nothing else to do-o-oo-o-oo, they basically just dance, drink and screw a lot.

One of them wants to better himself, and the best way he can think of to do
that is to work selling insurance rather than in the local factory with his
mates. In doing so, he meets the boss's daughter who he used to go out with
when he was twelve, and who is now engaged to an insufferable prick who also
works for her dad.

Another one of them is basically a Mick Jagger style Street Fightin' Man, who
takes nothing in his life seriously, despises his dad for letting his mum run
off with another man and doing nothing about it, and maintains that one day
he's going to leave.

The last one of them is their idiot mate, who's comic relief really.

And the whole thing then runs on the lines of working out what bettering
yourself really means, and whether a life of insurance sales is any better than
working in a factory.

I think this will be a bit of a nostalgia fest for anyone with a similar
upbringing. I know the feeling well; my hometown isn't the worst place on earth
to live, but when you're in your late teens to early twenties, you can't wait
to be out of the place. And it's an interesting view, that you don't
necessarily want to leave town because it's a bad place, just that it doesn't
feel like somewhere you can be yourself.

As it goes, the acting's really quite good, the script's very funny, and
Gervais and Merchant don't award themselves too much screen time (though I did
think Gervaise stuck out like a sore thumb while he was on.)

Overall, it's slight, but it's funny, and a bit interesting.