Set in the sleepy, rural village of Cemetery Junction, this 1970s coming-of-age story follows teenage best-buds and childhood friends Freddie, Bruce and Snork as they live out your traditional small town existence: amusing themselves during the daytime by spray painting giant willies onto billboards and harassing the bobbies, and "shaggin', boozin' and fightin' by night."

But while Snork is content with nothing more than his disastrous mission to get a girlfriend, bad-boy Bruce is dealing with his own family issues, and pretty boy Freddie is desperate to escape the life of his Dad and just about everyone else in the village - factory worker by day, beer-drinking, TV-watching by night.

Freddie's ambitions swiftly lead him into an office city job with smarmy businessman Mr Kendrick (Fiennes). A chance meeting with the boss' daughter, childhood friend Julie soon makes Freddie realise there's a lot more to life than an England-bound 9-5 office job and flashy car.

After so many bloated, self-important roles, it's an absolute delight to see Gervais' on-screen appearance stripped back - and he's all the more hilarious for it - in favour of a relatively unknown, teenage cast who shine with the conventional but sturdy script.

Fiennes, Watson and Goode all deliver predictably strong performances, but it's the surprisingly layered teen characters that form the nostalgia-tinged beating heart of the movie. Tom Hughes' rural James Dean brings a much-needed bolshiness to the trio's boyish escapades, while Christian Cooke's swoomsome good looks are matched by an impressively engaging turn as the claustrophobic dreamer ambitious to follow his heart.

In stripping away his movie CV's hereto high concept plotting and returning to his artistic routes, Gervais has crafted a comedy drama like the ones that led people to love him in the first place: relatable, heart-warming, and genuinely very very funny.

Matt Risley