School's out for the socially inept and cheerfully crude lads from hilarious British sitcom The Inbetweeners. Will, Simon, Jay and Neil go on holiday to chase girls at a holiday resort town in the Greek Islands with varying degrees of failure...
With exams over, school out and Simon freshly dumped by his girlfriend Carli, Will, Jay and Neil convince him to go with them to chase skirt in a resort town in Crete. What follows is a series of hilarious misadventures as the lads get swept up in the holiday spirit and end up over-doing things in their usual, hopeless, manner.
British TV comedies have a disappointing pedigree when stretched to big-screen length. Harry Enfield’s Kevin & Perry Go Large was 90 minutes too large, Rik Mayall’s much-loved Bottom became flabby beyond belief, and Ali G Indahouse really should have stayed there.
Sitcoms rely on simple, claustrophobic situations, so when writers dream up outlandish, fish-out-of-water plots to fill time they’re more far-fetched and less funny. TV-trained directors, meanwhile, often try so hard to be 'cinematic' that they burst the bubble of believability.
Based on tales of schoolyard mortification and sexual misadventure in suburban London, The Inbetweeners makes all of these mistakes and more in its expanded format, but scrapes by on past glories. A bubble-burstingly expensive helicopter/crane shot quickly introduces the gang – uptight Will (Bird), lovelorn Simon (Thomas), braggart Jay (Buckley) and dimwit Neil (Harrison) – before they’re whipped off to Malia, Crete, for some fish-out-of-water lads’ shenanigans.
Mostly this involves them incompetently romancing a group of inexplicably beguiled girls, slapdash plotting and endless shots of extras dancing, although there are enough cringey knob gags to hold the attention. Neil’s sexual encounters with a lady of advancing years are a highlight, and kudos to Theo Barklem-Biggs for nearly stealing the show as a brain-fried club casualty.
Though it was hardly subtle to begin with, there was something alluringly intimate about the TV show that evaporates in the Malia sun. As a standalone sixpack flick The Inbetweeners movie is fine, but as the epilogue to one of the best British sitcoms ever it’s, perhaps inevitably, a letdown.
By Matt Glasby, Flicks.co.nz
I didn't know what to really expect from this as I haven't really seen the TV series. But I really enjoyed it. It was crude and rude, but genuinely funny with several laugh-out-loud moments. The story was a bit cheesy, but overall a solid comedy that you can just sit back and enjoy without having to think!
Like any holiday, it is episodic and suffers from repetition but this is gag-for-gag the funniest film of the summer and a fitting end to a much-loved series. So long boys, it's been great to know you.
Updates the teen summer holiday formula surprisingly entertainingly, considering it doesn't subvert it one iota.
Affection for the characters will bring fans in. But many will leave wishing the makers of one of the most enjoyable programmes of recent years had left well enough alone.
A satisfying leap to the bigscreen in summer holiday adventure... A characteristically British, excessively drunken twist on the "American Pie" formula of sexual misadventure, adolescent male friendship and bodily fluids...
We've been told the NZ release date for this flick is Thursday, 27th Oct 2011.
Release date: October 27th 2011.
We haven't received times for this movie in this location yet. However these are updated as cinemas announce them, so check back soon. Hopefully the lovely cinemas in your location will choose to play it shortly. ~Ed.
