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.
Following three successful seasons the british comedy ‘The Inbetweeners’ has made the jump from TV to feature film. The show was created and written by Damon Beesley and Iain Morris, whom were both writers on the film adaptation, along with direction by series regular Ben Palmer.
With the inclusion of the central creative talents from the show, the translation from TV to film takes place seamlessly, fans of the show will immediately recognise the overall feel of the production including the characters, settings, and script as the audience is quickly brought up to speed with what the four lads have been up to since the conclusion of the third season.
Without retreading too much familiar ground, the film quickly sets-up a familiar premise for the remainder of the film, setting itself apart from simply being a number of episodes joined together to meet the running time of a film.
There is a mixture of new and old characters, but the core components that make the show funny and enjoyable are all here, the comedic sensibilities have been preserved, and the dialogue is as well written as ever. There are various examples where a series may make the jump from TV to film with mediocre or disappointing results, and while ‘The Inbetweeners’ is far from the best representation of the show, it maintains enough of its established characteristics to deliver fans a very funny and entertaining time.
The performances here are pitch perfect, the four central actors don’t skip a beat in bringing these characters to a feature length production, with Beesley and Morris providing them all with a solid script and enough comedic material to keep things fun. The new characters introduced for the film neither really add or detract from things, they tend to serve their purpose in provided the central lads with some characters and situations to work from, as it should the spotlight throughout the film is centred on the characters of Will, Jay, Neil and Simon and rarely leaves them.
The longer running time of a feature tends to provide a few more challenges to a production like ‘The Inbetweeners’, and it’s not without its slower paced moments and some periods where things run a little flat for a little too long however each and every time it feels as though the film might get too caught up in its own story and neglect the comedic elements it quickly returns to good form with some classic ‘Inbetweeners’ style comedy.
‘The Inbetweeners’ will still work for an audience new to these characters, and it may serve as a gateway into the existing episodes however at the same time it feels like something that’s definitely been made for the fans who can look forward to some solid new material with these characters, but without it quite achieving some of the highs of the episodes.
I’m giving ‘The Inbetweeners’ 3 out of 5 stars, it’s in cinemas around Australia from Thursday 25 November 2011.
