Ross v Ross

Four lads go off on holiday. No, it’s not The Hangover Part II again.

The Inbetweeners Movie (four stars)

There were quite a few cinematic surprises in 2011 – Michael Bay dumbfounded us all by making a film worse than Transformers 2 in the shape of, uh, Transformers 3, while the fifth Fast And The Furious movie also astonished audiences by turning out to be… really rather brilliant, actually. The biggest shock, however, came from a gang of unlikely English lads who went off to Malia on holiday and straight into our hearts. When it was released at the tail end of the summer, The Inbetweeners Movie was lapped up by a thirsty audience tired of big robots clunking into other big robots. It took a massive £13m in the UK on its opening weekend, eventually ending up with £45m and becoming the third biggest movie of the year behind Harry Potter and The King’s Speech. The reason? Perhaps it appealed to thousands of kids living in ‘the very definition of suburbia’ which it depicts. Or perhaps it’s just terribly flipping funny. Like most Brit flickcoms, it merely transports its protagonists to a foreign location – in this case, our four teenage heroes (pink suitcase-carrying Will, robotic dancer extraordinaire Neil, hair gel guru Simon and pervert Jay) head off to Greece for sun, sea and sexual encounters of the embarrassing kind. As Simon ruefully notes after another escapade gone wrong: ‘Probably a bit far for my dad to come pick us up.’ The film version of the E4 TV show doesn’t shy away from adolescent crudeness but like Jay, behind its macho bluster it really is quite sweet, capturing the silly yet poignant love/hate relationships you have with your mates. If it weren’t for the penis and vagina jokes, it would almost bring a tear to the eye…

Verdict: As British as a Carry On film with enough fleeting nudity to match, The Inbetweeners Movie is as raucous as a lads’ holiday should be but has real heart.

This review first appeared in the Metro newspaper

This entry was posted on December 13, 2011 at 10:04 pm and is filed under REVIEWS with tags Movie, The Inbetweeners, The Inbetweeners Movie. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.