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So David Brent decides to tour four miles from home in one final attempt to pursue his dreams of fame, fortune and musical success. Fifteen odd years from the events of the original series is a bit of a stretch but I digress.

Taking Brent from his familiar backdrop of Wernham Hogg was always risky, albeit logical, as events there had clearly run their course. However, this leaves a lot of the humour in the hands of DB, and how much you tolerate him will hinge on how much you will stick with the concept because, quite frankly, most of his work colleagues and band mates grated on my nerves from the go get. Although perhaps there was a reason for this.

It's not to say there aren't funny moments - there clearly are. And fine as they were, I would like to have seen more depth and development from Ben Bailey Smith, Mandhep Dhillon, Nina Sosanya and Jo Hartley than supporting players to the awkward comedy situations.

All this leads me to question why Gervais, never afraid to push an envelope or two, leaves the likes of Brent''s mental health issue unaddressed, or his role as the workplace's victim or villain unanswered. If The Office was a fairly accurate snapshot of white collar life in the early 2000s, how much of the infamous 'banter', 'humour' or faux 'Political Correctness' would be tolerated in 2016 let alone 2025?

Perhaps like Brent's colleagues just how much of this film you can take depends on how much of Gervais - Brent you can tolerate. A little of this humour goes a long way. For all that, it all felt just a bit pedestrian and repetitive with a pat ending to boot. Not a bad effort then, but it could have been better.

I saw this a VERY long time ago, when Elizabeth Hurley and Hugh Grant were cresting on their mid-1990s power couple wave (and just before Hugh became unstuck in his personal life) after the impact of 'Four Weddings' and a certain Versace dress. Liz suffered her share indignities for this movie, appearing topless on the side of VHS box for one (!), as well as being catapulted into the pages of numerous 'lads mags' on the strength of it, but it was their breakthrough that ensured that this otherwise long forgotten project had any sort of profile at all.

I'd like to think that somewhere the one shot writer may have had in mind some kind of romance - crime drama like 'Mona Lisa' but the screenplay is a shouty , incomprehensible mess of coincidences, contrivences and craziness. Most of the characters are unlikeable, although given that most are upper class junkies that should come as no surprise.

Yes, Liz is in sparklingly wooden form for a long term drug abuser but I'd argue that Elizabeth Taylor in her prime would have had an uphill battle with this material. That even the great Joss Ackland and C Thomas Howell struggle to deliver acceptable performances suggests that Hurley was perhaps being judged perhaps a little too harshly.

Only Jeremy Brett, the quintessential Sherlock Holmes, and a fine classical actor in his own right, soars far above the swamp of mediocrity. That he and Ackland both disassociated themselves from what would be Brett's final movie is a sad testament to a performer who undoubtably deserved a better epithet.

Mind you, it's always worth remembering that this is how fame was often achieved in the days of pre-social media and instant successes - a long apprenticeship of hard graft, obscurity and appearances clunkers like this.

Rotten comedy about a couple of married one percenters - a phoned in Alex Baldwin and Salma Hayek in her worst role in over twenty years- trying to conceal mounting financial difficulties from their co-ed daughter. Or are they trying to maintain their social standing with their snobbish friends? Or maybe struggling with their new circumstances?

The script doesn't seem to know, the actors and director don't seem to know, and you will struggle to care after the first 10 minutes. I'll put it this way, if cack handed jokes about sexual molestation, vigilantes, foul mouthed kids, drunken violence, and brainless toilet humour, float your boat then go right ahead; but there's nothing you've seen here that's been delivered better elsewhere.

Baldwin and Hayek actually had a very good chemistry in 30 Rock. There's the odd hint of this here and there when they're allowed to actually act. Treat Williams crops up in a zero role, looking bemused and ogling Hayek. At least he got something out if it.

The turning point's a horrible cameo from Will Ferrell - that's when I lost patience, right there. Sorry, but gags about homeless men self immolating left a sour taste in my book, lowering an already mediocre comedy into yet further depths. Riches to Rags were the gold standard for the likes of Trading Places or Brewster's Millions; Drunken Parents is just an exercise in bankruptcy with some fairly amoral undertones.