Ricky Gervais’ feature-film adaptation of “Radio Bart” is finally coming to Netflix. Okay, it’s not technically an adaptation of The Simpsons episode where Bart fakes falling down a well, but it’s the same basic format. Eric Bana and Gervais (who also wrote this iteration of the original 2009 French film) star as radio war correspondents who are broadcasting gripping reports from a rebel uprising in Ecuador, but are actually filing every story from the comfort and safety of a New York apartment. As time passes, however, their lack of presence convinces everyone they’ve been kidnapped, and they’re forced to actually travel to the country and seek out their supposed kidnappers in order to avoid being exposed.
If this trailer is any indication, you’ll be seeing some grade-A ham on display, as Bana—who demonstrated a real talent for comedy during his scene-stealing role in Funny People—looks to be goofing it up pretty hard with Gervais. Happily, there’s also Vera Farmiga, who on Bates Motel has made a glorious art form out of going overboard. As previously reported, Netflix picked up the film, and will make it available for streaming beginning April 29. And thus, the great circle of cultural appropriation continues: The French make art, the British steal it, and then America claims it as our own. Hakuna matata.