The Inbetweeners Movie


The Inbetweeners Movie, known simply as The Inbetweeners in North America, is a 2011 British coming-of-age comedy film based on the E4 sitcom The Inbetweeners, written by series creators Damon Beesley and Iain Morris and directed by Ben Palmer. The film follows the misadventures of a group of teenage friends on holiday in Malia after the end of their final year at school together, and was intended as an ending to the TV series. It stars Simon Bird, Joe Thomas, James Buckley and Blake Harrison. The Inbetweeners Movie was released on 17 August 2011 in the UK and Ireland by Entertainment Film Distributors, to favourable reviews, although its later release in the United States was not as well received. It was a commercial success, setting the record for the biggest opening weekend for a comedy film in the UK. A sequel, The Inbetweeners 2, was released on 6 August 2014.

Plot

Teenage friends Will McKenzie, Simon Cooper, Jay Cartwright, and Neil Sutherland have just finished their A-levels and are about to leave Rudge Park Comprehensive, much to the relief of their sardonic head of sixth form, Mr. Gilbert. Within their final week of school, Jay's grandfather dies; Simon is dumped by his girlfriend Carli D'Amato; Neil is in a relationship with a girl he works beside at ASDA called Nicole and Will's estranged father tells him that he has married his much younger mistress. To celebrate leaving school, the boys decide to go on a “lads holiday” together to Malia, Crete.
The boys arrive and are at first put off by their shabby hotel. They venture out to the night time bars in the town centre and meet a group of four girls: Alison, Lucy, Lisa, and Jane. Their initial meeting does not go smoothly, after the boys first embarrass themselves by dancing comically in an attempt to impress the girls, their conversations with them are equally inadequate; Jay is put off by Jane due to her weight, whilst Simon is too busy complaining about Carli to Lucy to notice her attraction towards him and Neil sits with Lisa in silence before going off with a portly, middle-aged Northern woman. Will and Alison seem to get on quite well, sharing similar personality traits, however Alison is already in a relationship with a local Greek waiter called Nicos. Despite this, the girls arrange to meet the boys at their hotel the next day. Outside the bar, Simon sees Carli across the street and is at first uncontrollably overjoyed, until he's knocked down by a quad bike driven by Carli's new love interest, James, a cocky, arrogant club rep. Carli reveals that she is going to an all-day boat party later in the week as part of her last day in Malia, and Simon promises to meet her there. Will and Simon head back to the hotel, whilst Jay and Neil continue partying at the bars.
The next day, Will and Simon awaken to the noise of Neil having oral sex from the same middle-aged woman and find Jay had fallen asleep outside on top of an ant hill. The boys meet the girls at their hotel, but after Jay throws a family's towels off their reserved sun beds and an annoying nine-year old Greek boy who can't swim into the pool, they are asked to leave. Jay and Simon get into an argument over Simon's continuing obsession with Carli and Jay's continual false claims over sexual experiences and they brawl in the street, embarrassingly, until Will and Neil separate the pair. Desperate to buy a ticket for the boat party to try to reconcile with Carli, Simon naively sells all of his clothes to James, including the clothes that he is wearing, but receives no payment for it after waiting hours for him to "return". Meanwhile, it's revealed Jay had bought four boat party tickets the previous night, but he angrily tears up Simon and Will's after the fight. He and Neil then go to a club where they encounter James and his friends and try to befriend them, but James verbally abuses the pair and even throttles Jay, forcing them to leave. Later that evening, the four boys meet back at the empty bar and make up; Simon borrows clothing from the others for the rest of the trip. The girls then turn up and Will and Alison, Simon and Lucy and Jay and Jane all start to grow close to each other. The girls then suggest that they all go skinny dipping at the local beach. Jane attempts to kiss Jay, but when two men poke fun at her being overweight and Jay pulls away embarrassed, she leaves him behind. Will and Alison share a brief moment of intimacy, until she spots her boyfriend, Nicos, having sex with another woman, and she leaves distraught by what she had just witnessed. In the sea, Lucy and Simon are about to kiss, but Simon sees Carli on the beach and leaves Lucy alone in the sea, angering her. With all the girls having left in disgust, the boys, feeling down, decide to go out and get drunk.
The following day is the all-day boat party. The group meet the girls again at the beach, where Will and Alison reconcile and she gives him Nicos' ticket to join her on the boat. Elsewhere, Simon apologises to Lucy. She offers him her boat party ticket so that he can be with Carli; although Simon once again fails to notice her attraction to him and snatches her ticket abruptly. On board, Simon witnesses an argument between Carli and James. Carli then kisses Simon passionately, and he is elated, until he realises that she is just using him to make James jealous. Finally seeing Carli for her true colours, he leaves her. Meanwhile, Will and Alison admit their feelings toward each other and Jay apologises to Jane and both start a relationship. Neil and Lisa too begin a relationship, although at first Lisa feels bad about Neil's girlfriend but he tells her Nicole dumped him before the holiday and that he was too embarrassed to tell the others. Later, Jay and Jane encounter James who mocks Jane's weight and demands a €20 note from Jay so that he can snort cocaine. Jay gets revenge on him by giving James a note that was secretly concealed in his anus for bribing "corrupt foreign police"; as a result, James snorts cocaine, unknowingly walking around with faeces stuck to the end of his nose causing the girls whom he flirts with to walk away from him in disgust, much to his confusion. Simon finally sees that Lucy is more worthy of his attention than Carli, and knowing that he has been less than kind to her, he decides, on encouragement from both the boys and girls, to swim back to shore as a romantic gesture. However, he nearly drowns on the way there. Nevertheless, as he is loaded into an air ambulance and taken back to the beach, Lucy kisses him and they reconcile.
During the final credits, the four boys and the girls all spend the rest of their holiday together as couples. When the holiday ends, the group say goodbye at the airport in tears. Once they return to England however, the boys meet the girls through the same airport gate and the boys introduce them to their parents; it is then revealed that Neil lied about his break-up with Nicole, as he quickly runs away, with Lisa, after spotting her. In the final scene before the credits, a drunken Mr. Gilbert is seen riding a quad bike through the streets of Malia in his boxer shorts with a tie tied around his head in John Rambo style.

Cast

List of cast members:
The official soundtrack consists of:
Songs not on the official soundtrack but featured in the film:
took place in the United Kingdom, Magaluf, and Malia, Crete in July 2010. A YouTube video shows the lads walking down the Malia Strip, walking past popular clubs 'Corkers', the strip club 'GoGo Lap Dancing Club' and 'Candy Club'. The Interiors of the empty club where Neil shows off his dance moves were shot in Infernos night club on Clapham High Street, London.

Release

Box office

On its first day of release, The Inbetweeners Movie grossed over £2.5 million in 409 cinemas. The film then went on to set a new record for the most successful opening weekend ever achieved by a comedy film in the UK, overtaking and The Hangover Part II after earning £13.22 million, compared to second-place Rise of the Planet of the Apes which took £2.4 million. The Inbetweeners Movie was confirmed as having the biggest opening weekend for an independent British film. It retained its number 1 position in the UK film charts for four weeks before being overtaken by Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy on 20 September 2011, by which time The Inbetweeners Movie had grossed £41.8 million overall. The film saw a limited theatrical release in the United States on 7 September 2012, where it grossed $36,000 making its total box office revenue $88,025,781.

Critical reception

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 53% based on 51 reviews, with an average rating of 5.3/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "It arguably plays most strongly to fans of the British series, but even viewers who have never seen The Inbetweeners on TV may find themselves won over by the film's surprisingly tender ribaldry." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 44 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Ian Freer of Empire gave the film four stars out of five, observing that "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." Steve Rose of The Guardian gave the film three stars out of five, giving particular praise to Simon Bird's performance and arguing that the film "updates the teen summer holiday formula surprisingly entertainingly, considering it doesn't subvert its one iota and the formula was already done previously with Holiday on the Buses and Kevin & Perry Go Large among others." Tim Robey of The Daily Telegraph also gave a positive assessment of the film, praising it as "an enormous hit, a Mamma Mia! for the Hangover demographic." Screen Daily, on the other hand, gave a mixed review, praising the performances of the main cast and proclaiming the film "Britain’s delayed riposte to American Pie", yet simultaneously arguing that it "can't quite shake off its TV roots, and plot-wise, this is nothing the Greek tourist board would want to advertise." Australian critic Margaret Pomeranz from At the Movies called the characters "gormless" and said, "I'm giving this one star really generously." She also said that the style of humour in the film was the reason that the British Empire collapsed.

Home media

On 12 December 2011, The Inbetweeners Movie was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc in the UK by 4DVD, with the latter version sold as a triple pack containing both formats along with a digital copy of the film. Both versions include a number of special features, such as a making-of documentary, footage from the film's London premiere, various deleted scenes, cast commentaries and a blooper reel.
Following its appearance in UK stores, the DVD quickly became a major financial success. Within less than a week, the film became the third fastest-selling British home media release of 2011 after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, with approximately 575,000 copies sold in the first day of its release. By 17 December, estimated sales reached one million, resulting in the film displacing the home media release of Paul as one of the five best-selling DVDs of the year in the UK.
In December 2014, parallel with the release of the film's sequel, a special edition with both films was released on DVD.

Extended version

The Blu-ray release also features an extended cut of the film that restores approximately four minutes of material omitted from the theatrical release, most notably an additional scene in which Will and Simon encounter a drunken Mr. Gilbert on a Malia stag weekend.

Sequel

A sequel to the film, titled The Inbetweeners 2, was released in British and Irish cinemas on 6 August 2014. It is set in Australia.