It’s a big year for Ricky Gervais, what with hosting, features, and stand-up on the cards. However, if the return to the Globes was a solid first step, then Special Correspondents is a stumble into knee-high shit.

What looks to be a welcome move in allowing Bana to draw focus early on soon gives way to the familiar Ricky Gervais Show, as Reading mouth meets tin-ear – a choice cut: “I’m destined for bigger things and I know it”.

Around both, a nonsensical, unbelieveable story is matched only by its crayon-sketched characters before wandering to an end both welcome and rushed.

Much like his character’s dispatches from Ecuador, Special Correspondents feels like a Gervais phone-in job – which is pretty impressive when it comes from the film’s writer/director/star.

RATING: 1/5

INFORMATION

CAST: Ricky Gervais, Eric Bana, Kelly Macdonald, Vera Farmiga, Kevin Pollack, Benjamin Bratt

DIRECTOR: Ricky Gervais

WRITERS: Ricky Gervais

SYNOPSIS: Having missed their flight to Ecuador in the midst of an uprising, radio journalist Frank Bonneville (Bana) and his technician Ian Finch (Gervais) decide to phone in fictional reports from New York. Unfortunately the situation spirals out of control and the two end up faking their own kidnapping in an attempt to wrest back dominance of the situation. Meanwhile, Finch’s wife (Farmiga) seeks to bend the situation to her own advantage.