Ricky Gervais stars as Ian Finch, a radio sound engineer who  acts as an assistant to station lead reporter Frank Bonneville (Eric Bana) who’s confident swagger often gets him stories before other journalists but he is not a particularly nice person, speaks down to his colleagues and ignores his boss Geoffrey Mallard (Kevin Pollack) who tries to keep him in check.

When news arrives of an uprising in Ecuador, Bonneville bullies his boss into sending him to the action and Finch is the compatriot who draws the short straw and has to accompany him. On the way to the airport Finch loses the tickets and passports so while he and Bonneville are sitting in a local Spanish restaurant they decide the best course of action is to fake the news report using some clever sound work and Bonnevilles talent of making up lies on the spot.

This works well enough until the situation in Ecuador takes a turn for the worse, mainly down to the lies they are creating and the pair are ordered to check into the US Embassy in Quito for their own safety. When they realise that they have no chance of doing so, they decide to fake their kidnapping to buy themselves some time. As one lie leads to another and with Finch’s wife Eleanor (Vera Famiga), who actually couldn’t give a damn about him, drumming up a rescue campaign to make money and gain her fifteen minutes of fame in the limelight Finch and Bonneville have to try and smuggle into Ecuador and report to the US Embassy claiming that they manage to escape their captors and during this escapade they are actually captured by Ecuadorian drug runners.

While the premise sounds great the film suffers from a lack of realism, is it plausible that this could occur, unlikely but possible, but the film spends too much time on the two leads sitting on a sofa killing time until the next report is due, which leads to a lot of drag in the movie speed. Even after they travel to Ecuador there is still a farcical feel about the who thing so the real kidnapping never feels dangerous or particular interesting.

Yes, there’s plenty of satire about how gullible the TV watch public can be, a few laughs here and there and a good concept for a film but when Famiga is the best part of a movie where she should only be a bit part player it shows how this movie missed the mark. Let’s hope that Gervais can bring the laughs more freely in the upcoming David Brent movie.

DJ Speaks rating: 5.5 Out Of 10