Cemetery Junction

(This movie was inexplicably not released in theaters in the US and is already available on DVD and Blu-ray.)

The men responsible for two of the finest TV shows of the past decade (the UK "Office" and "Extras"), Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, have re-teamed for their first movie together. The result, while quite good, smacks of a strange sort of disappointment. This goes beyond the feeling of anticipation however. Regardless of who made it or any preconceived notions about it, "Cemetery Junction" is a problematic good movie.
It's 1973 and Freddie Taylor (Christian Cooke) is a young man in the British industrial city of Reading. Unlike his two closest friends, Bruce (Tom Hughes) and Snork (Jack Doolan), Freddie is working somewhere that can provide him a promising future. He's the newest salesman for Mr. Kendrick (Ralph Fiennes) at a life insurance firm. Kendrick has future son-in-law Mike (Matthew Goode) show him how the job is done and in an early scene we witness Freddie's discomfort with Mike's unsavory sales tactics. As it turns out, Mike is engaged to Julie (Felicity Jones), who's not only Kendrick's daughter but a childhood friend of Freddie's. Not having seen her for years, Freddie realizes the feelings he once had for her haven't disappeared.
When he's not struggling to make sales Freddie spends his time getting into mischief with smooth talking but short tempered Bruce and the dimwitted but loveable Snork. Bruce has been talking about getting out of Reading for years but the only places he ever ends up going are the local pub and jail after a night of fighting. Snork meanwhile, spends his spare time designing awful tattoos for himself. Freddie loves his friends but desperately hopes to make something of himself that he suspects they never will. Meanwhile, he falls more and more for Julie every day.
"Cemetery Junction" is a coming of age film that follows the genre's formula practically to the letter. It works because the characters are as well developed as they are. Still, as previously mentioned it's problematic. The actions of these characters, particularly what each one does at film's end, all make sense. We understand why they choose the paths they end up choosing. The reason it's problematic is that those actions are exactly what we've seen so many times before. Nothing is a surprise so the mixture of melancholy and exhilaration that Gervais and Merchant are attempting doesn't have the impact that it should. Still, it's a good movie with some really outstanding little moments. Kendrick's backhanded tribute to an employee he's "putting out to pasture" is one of the most effecting moments in a movie I've seen in some time.
Gervais and Merchant get the most from their actors here, particularly Cooke and Hughes, who gives Bruce a kind of rock star presence. Every scene between Bruce and his father (Francis Magee) is heartbreaking. Fiennes and Emily Watson are both excellent as always and Gervais has some very funny scenes as Freddie's father. "Cemetery Junction" is a good film. But not great. 7.5/10.