Sent on their way from a London suburban comprehensive that’s glad they’ve made it through exams – 'try not to kill anyone," a senior teacher cautions, 'it reflects badly on us here" – the teenage stars of The Inbetweeners give great British face; and by great I mean pasty, lumpen and gormless. These are the background profiles of multiple generations of British cinema, the silent extras of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning or Happy-Go-Lucky, suddenly placed in the spotlight. There are producers of Hollywood teen films who would cry if they saw the stars of this lightweight but likable lads abroad comic adventure, because they are so stunningly average.
That everyteen quality was one of the selling points of the original Inbetweeners television series, which enjoyed three increasingly successful seasons on Britain’s E4 channel. The movie adaptation picks up where the show ended – the finish of high school – and it’s not just the storyline that’s linked. The film is bathed in natural light, courtesy of Mediterranean locations, but it’s no great step-up in visual terms from the sitcom to the movie. Director Ben Palmer, working from a script by the show’s creators Damon Beesley and Iain Morris, is unsurprisingly another television transplant.
Little effort has been made to distinguish the small screen version from the large, and it’s assumed that if you’re watching the movie then you must know the show well. The four central characters – nebbish Will (Simon Bird), neurotic Simon (Joe Thomas), loudmouth Jay (James Buckley) and dim-witted Neil (Blake Harrison) – are soon packaged up from the parents whose foibles are just one of the many adolescent crosses they have to bear, and sent on a package holiday to Crete, where they join in the modern British tradition of going somewhere warm to drink extensively, vomit and happily soil the national character.
The unfinished resort they wind up at resembles the similar set-up from 1972’s Carry on Abroad, which gives you an idea of the picture’s lineage. The writing, however, is sharper, the quartet manage to be project self-awareness even as they indulge in stupidity; sarcasm can’t stop them stuffing up. 'Are we playas?" asks Simon, who is pursuing the girlfriend who just broke up with him, and the answer is a firm no, and their efforts to fit in with the stereotypes instilled in them always go pear-shaped. There’s also, somewhat more subtly, a note of gentle reproach, as they realise that exchanging school for something akin to adulthood doesn’t necessarily guarantee more freedom, just new overlords.
The MA rating is well earnt, with the brisk vulgarity of the television show given licence to bloom, but when their incessant obsession with talking about sex stems from a comparative lack of having it, there’s a daft kind of charm to these social shenanigans. There is, of course, a falling out between friends, a bully who must be bested and even a quartet of holidaying girls who match up a little too well (you may wonder if their story would make for a more interesting movie). The brisk energy and expert performances – Blake Harrison’s vacant stare will haunt you – carry the day, balancing the cringe worthy humour, and it’s all so neatly put together that The Inbetweeners’ staggeringly unexpected success at the British box-office, where it’s taken approximately $65 million, actually makes sense.
