Review: The Inbetweeners Movie (2011)

by

06, September 2012Reviews


Cast: James Buckley, Blake Harrison, Joe Thomas
Director: Ben Palmer
Country: UK
Genre: Comedy
Official Trailer: Here

The Inbetweeners Movie opens in limited release tomorrow

Unleashed upon British and Irish markets long over a year ago, it’s surprising in and of itself to see The Inbetweeners Movie land a North American release at all, its roots in UK television and undeniably native humour seeming to make it a product of limited audience appeal. Yet that’s the wonderful thing about the show, and the film after it: whatever the cultural context, this is a story with universal applications—as attested by MTV’s flaccid attempt at an American remake—its chronicling of the lives of four socially awkward young adults more relatable to real experience than their fantastical antics might suggest.

TV the like of Skins and films such as Kidulthood have postulated a skewed portrait of contemporary British youth that, though used to address predominant issues, suggests a minority as the majority. It’s the relativity of The Inbetweeners that makes them all the funnier; this is the youth familiar to far more, the frivolity of its misadventures as nostalgic as they are nonsensical.

The four are Will, Simon, Jay, and Neil, whose adventures in the final years of their formal education were the concern of the TV show’s eighteen episodes. Now graduated and forced off to face the wider world of adult responsibility, a booze-laden trip to foreign lands is the first call of duty, taking them to a suitably ramshackle hotel in Crete and the miasma of neon-soaked nightclubs intent on luring in just such an impressionable young clientele.

There’s no doubt that The Inbetweeners will play better to an audience already familiar with its characters and their idiosyncrasies, those already acquainted with the intertwining relationships and in-jokes that have seen this quartet through their final school years. By far the greater player in enjoyment of the film is these characters’ sheer reality, their abundantly awkward faux pas a more worldly alternative to the drug-fuelled sexual antics of fellow network show Skins, which traded in the kind of gritty urban youth culture of which these four could only ever have dreamed. TV the like of Skins and films such as Kidulthood have postulated a skewed portrait of contemporary British youth that, though used to address predominant issues, suggests a minority as the majority. It’s the relativity of The Inbetweeners that makes them all the funnier; this is the youth familiar to far more, the frivolity of its misadventures as nostalgic as they are nonsensical.

The script, by show creators Damon Beesley and Iain Morris, lends a backseat but nonetheless crucial role to the completion of character arcs, the eccentric failings of the four as basic human beings gradually ironed out in the course of their escapades. This is, after all, a tale of maturation, and it might seem surprising to find quite so much heart buried among such devilishly funny vulgarity.

The inexperienced drunkenness and sexual misdirection of The Inbetweeners is the chief source of its wit, the humour a weighted blend of crass teen talk and the amusing intimacies of boyhood friendships. This is not a film of sophisticated comedy, though that shouldn’t be taken to mean it as any less intelligent. The script, by show creators Damon Beesley and Iain Morris, lends a backseat but nonetheless crucial role to the completion of character arcs, the eccentric failings of the four as basic human beings gradually ironed out in the course of their escapades. This is, after all, a tale of maturation, and it might seem surprising to find quite so much heart buried among such devilishly funny vulgarity. The characters’ evolutions come by standard means and expected resolutions, yet the humour of Beesley and Morris keeps a formulaic structure fresh: even within the confines of a familiar framework, the gradual emergence of these kids as respectable human beings is a genuine one.

With four leads whose years together have allowed them the perfect enmeshing of their comic talents, The Inbetweeners delivers bountifully on its efforts to present youth without cinematic excess, thriving on the familiar reality of these audacious teen antics. What Beesley and Morris lose for the unoriginality of their plot structure they make up abundantly in the vulgar beauty of their humour, showering us with the most calculatedly crass comedy that belies something a good deal more humanistic. This is no radical character study, nor a flippantly offensive indulgence in tactlessness. What it is is something altogether more special: an accurate representation of those scary years caught between the fantasy of childhood and the reality of the adult world.

70/100 ~ GOOD. The Inbetweeners Movie delivers bountifully on its efforts to present youth without cinematic excess, thriving on the familiar reality of these audacious teen antics.

Ronan Doyle
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Assistant Editor and Senior Film Critic. Having spent the vast majority of my life sharing in the all too prevalent belief than cinema is merely dumbed-down weekend escapism for the masses, I was lucky enough to turn on a television at the exact right moment to have my perspectives on the medium completely transformed. Those first two and a half hours marked the beginning of a new life revolving around—maybe even depending upon—the screen and the depth of artistry, intellectual stimulation, and emotional exhilaration it can provide.