dalt99

Ricky Gervais is a funny guy and he is allowed to show off his humor and dry wit in a wonderfully hilarious way throughout most of this movie. It starts off with him in his office. As Bertram Pincus, he is a dentist and a woman is in his chair gabbing non-stop about her family life. Gervais' character could care less about her life. Throughout the first 45 minutes or so of the movie we learn that Bertram is not only a loner but a self-centered jerk. Not a rude, screaming name-calling jerk but a guy who speaks his mind and just isn't afraid of hurting peoples feelings. This makes him seem more real and so the humor is much more realistic and not over the top like so many movies seem to be these days. For example, in one early scene a fellow dentist in his office is inviting him to cake to celebrate the birth of his child. Most people would say, "great, be right there" and that would be it. In other movies, the jerk would say something like "Why do I care about your damn baby?" Instead, Bertram looks at him for a few seconds with a slightly annoyed look on his face and asks "Anything else?" It's dry biting wit like that which kept me laughing out loud through the first half of the movie. Another scene with him in the hospital has a nurse asking him general questions that everybody has had to answer when checking into a hospital such as what is your date of birth and what's your address. In other movies he might make up some silly answers to these questions but true to his character he just refuses to answer these "irrelevant" questions and the back and forth that goes on with him and nurse had me in stitches. For me though, once the movie gets into the second half with Bertram helping out Kinnear's character, who is a ghost after dying early in the movie, the movie starts to feel like every other romantic comedy with cliché misunderstandings and the "I saw that coming from a mile away" ending that mostly blows it for me. The biting and dry humor is there throughout the movie but it becomes less frequent as the ending draws near. So, as much as I enjoyed the first half, as usual, once the romantic part of the comedy comes into focus, the comedy becomes more cliché and less realistic. Even my friend who is a HUGE romcom fanatic was rolling her eyes and looking bored through most of the second half. The first half is funny and fresh with laughs coming at a rapid pace, while the second half slows down to a crawl at times and drags on with plot devices borrowed from hundreds of other romantic comedies. Too bad. Just like Gervais' character, this movie started out to be different and real but in the second half it decided to conform to every other movie of it's type.

This was such a fun film! There are plenty of TV shows today that show car chases and scenes of race car drivers crashing or doing odd things but this movie was and still is unique. It was hosted by two beer drinking fans (actors) of high speed, dirt spitting vehicles. Most of the movie was footage from different types of races and vehichles including motorcycle racing, tractor pulling, 24 hour La Mans racing sprint car racing and many more. They covered almost every different type of vehicle dirt racing you could ever think of. They even had scenes of destruction derbys where cars just crash into each other trying to disable each other. One of the nice parts about the movie was it was not just scenes of cars wrecking on after another but they would interview race stars such as Rick Mears and Parnelli Jones as well as the no-name local heros of backwoods tracks and get thier comments on why they love what they do so much. All the while the hosts kept it fun with their comments and details of what we were seeing on the screen. It is a very entertaining movie and I have never seen anything quite like it before or since that time even with all the thrills and spills shows you see nowadays. A lost gem for racing fans.