Cemetery Junction Review
Since creating TV shows The Office and Extras, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant have been recognized as two of Britain’s best-known comedic talents. Gervais is particularly known as the front man for the duo and has thus entered into other projects: stand-up tours, starring film roles, directing a film and even a guest starring on Alias. The two men have reunited to write and direct their first feature film together with Cemetery Junction.
Christian Cooke plays Freddie Taylor, a man in his 20s living in the early ’70s in Cemetery Junction, a suburb of Reading, England. Freddie wants to avoid the same life path his parents and contemporaries have taken: leaving school at 14 to work in the local factory for the rest of their lives. He goes to work at a life insurance company run by Mr. Kendrick (Ralph Fiennes) and taught by salesman Mike Ramsay (Matthew Goode).
Freddie spends his free time with his close friends Bruce (Tom Hughes) and Snork (Jack Doolan) doing all the jolly things in life: drinking, fighting and trying to score with girls. But Freddie is slowly distancing himself from them because they refuse to shed their childish ways. He also remakes a friendship with Julie (Felicity Jones), whom he last saw when he was 12. She tells Freddie her passion is to travel the world and he too has those thoughts. He becomes disillusioned with everything in Cemetery Junction.