In years of financial depression, people turn to the cinema as a source of diversion, and often what they are seeking most is a laugh. One need only look at Charlie Chaplin’s successes following the Wall Street Crash of 1929 in classics such as ‘City Lights,’ (1931) ‘Modern Times’ (1936) and ‘The Great Dictator,’ (1940) to see how when the wheels of despair turn, comedy shines its head and lightens the mood. Apart from anything, comedies are generally cheap to make. The 2008 economic collapse has called for a new wave of comedy. But modern audiences, more cynical and jaded than those of the twentieth century, need more than farcical pratfalls or slapstick to elicit a snigger, and so the most modern form of cinematic humour, the ‘awkwardly truthful comedy’ has been born. Dating back to the mid-‘70s, with the likes of Woody Allen’s ‘Annie Hall,’ (1977) and often taking very realistic situations, it puts the audience in the embarrassing position of having to face a social drama or tragedy, whether it be members of ‘Spinal Tap’ playing their hearts out to a near empty airbase in ‘This is Spinal Tap,’ (1984) or Ricky Gervais’ painfully real David Brent of ‘The Office,’ (2001-2003) that disgusting little man from Slough, who made us all crawl in our seats by desperately trying to be cool and well-liked.

A viewing of Gervais’ most recent film, ‘The Invention of Lying,’ (2009) however, left me sorely disappointed. Gervais’ last American effort ‘Ghost Town,’ (2008) while not groundbreaking, was a by the numbers comedy made great by the presence of the rotund little man. What was missing from ‘Lying’ was the unique awkward input of Gervais. The concept behind the film, and a clever one at that, is that everyone in the world tells nothing but the painful truth, down to disgruntled waiters who hate their jobs and tell you they have had a sip of your drink; Coke commercials on TV asking you to please keep drinking their product, even though ‘it’s basically just brown sugar water;’ and most amusingly the entertainment industry, which consists of ‘real’ stories told in a fireside chat manner by stoic looking professors, with titles such as ‘The Black Death!’ The story, devised by American writer Mathew Robinson, sees Gervais become the first man to tell a lie, and how he uses this to his advantage to win over the lovely Jennifer Garner. Gervais, who until now has only ever worked with co-writing partner Stephen Merchant, loved the script and helped Robinson get the film made. Robinson’s novel idea and Gervais’ natural awkwardness seemed to be the perfect match. What went wrong? The real problem is that once you give the whole world that embarrassingly truthful sensibility, it kills the concept because it removes the normal on-screen responses. If everyone is used to hearing painful truths, the camera can’t pan to the reactions of disgusted or shocked real characters, mirroring the audience’s own feelings. The priceless face of the hurt band members of Spinal Tap, or shocked co-workers of David Brent, notably normal guy Tim, (Martin Freeman) are what gets us as an audience to feel the pain of the moment, and laugh in spite of it.

Is this an American failure to translate a good British thing? After all, there have been a few missteps, such as the dire U.S. version of ‘Men Behaving Badly.’(1996) But Americans have made a successful convert of ‘The Office,’ starring Steve Carrell, which stays true to the mood of the British original, and have their own home-grown embarrassment in the shape of the curmudgeonly Larry David of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm.’ The success of seemingly anything that Judd Apatow and his troupe touch is evidence of this; just look at ‘Superbad,’ (2007) ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall,’ (2008) and ‘I Love You, Man,’ (2009) they all have the same awkward comedy shtick, with an added healthy helping of penis jokes. Apatow’s most recent addition to his team, the infamously verbal-diarrhoea crazed Russell Brand, is another British export, whose personality helped inspire a few characters in recent Apatow productions, including the character Sydney Fife in ‘I Love You Man,’ who Jason Segel said was based on ‘Brand’s cavalier attitude to life,’ as well as of course Brand’s own character Aldous Snow, due for his own spin-off next summer in ‘Get Him To The Greek.’ (2010) Brand’s devil-may-care style uses the honesty factor to win over women, while Gervais uses it to get ahead and be smarmy. On the whole both sides of the Atlantic seem to share a love for awkward comedy. Let us just hope that this relationship continues, and Gervais’ next effort allows him to be the only awkward man in the room.