FILM REVIEW The Inbetweeners 2

Boys will be boys

Going Out
Ciara Galvin

OK, anyone offended by crude language, scenes of a sexual nature, references to sexual acts and derogatory references to women, look away now.
When The Inbetweeners hit TV screens in 2008 it rapidly gathered a cult following, with yours truly being one of those glued to the hilarious series each week.
It was its crude humour and ‘cringe-tastic’ happenings that caught my attention. I went to a mixed school, so lads making fun of each other and trying to out-do each other is very familiar. The show’s depiction of this was unerringly accurate.
The four characters are a typical group: the foul-mouthed Jay, who tells his friends how many women he has wooed with his charm (well not exactly like that!); Will, the book smart newbie whose known by his friends as ‘Briefcase W*****’; Neil the ‘nice but dim’ character and Simon, the hopeless romantic.
When the third and final series ended in 2010, I, like many, was sad to see it go, hoping that the producers would change their minds and roll out a few more instalments.
Instead, they went one better and created The Inbetweeners Movie. It was a roaring success at the box office.
That dancing scene in the club goes down as one of my all-time favourites, and sayings from the film are used so much in common language that they could be entered into the Oxford English Dictionary.
As with all sequels, I went into The Inbetweeners Movie 2 wary. I rarely like sequels, and I felt that nothing could top the first instalment.
The film opens in spectacular fashion with Jay now living in Australia and having the time of his life with a myriad of Aussie beauties, including the Minogue sisters. He lives in a mansion, owns a club and is so tough he punches koala bears (no koala bears were harmed during the filming). The others are back in England, dressed as characters from Harry Potter with another memorable scene (for all the wrong reasons) involving Neil, a kilt and a labrador dog. All of a sudden, a plan comes about to surprise Jay with a visit.
The humour of old is still there. The lads are seen in a crowded nightclub with their rucksacks and suitcases in tow. Looking over Darling Harbour, Neil enquiries what the ‘spaceship’ thing is. Sydney Opera House.
They finally locate Jay, who in reality is working as a bathroom attendant in the nightclub, and yes, the Minogue sisters and the mansion were a figment of his imagination.
After many attempts of trying to pretend to be someone else, an Aussie look-a-like, he finally gives admits to indeed being Jay. He brings them home, to his tent, pitched at the front of his uncle’s house.
The lads soon decide to travel to backpacker’s paradise Byron Bay, but instead of going on the bus with the cool people who are on their ‘gap yaa’ , they travel in Jay’s car, which is emblazoned with Peter Andre’s face and the lyrics of ‘Mysterious Girl’.
Like the first film there are some truly memorable moments, like Neil feeding a dolphin takeaways and Will singing ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ in a high-pitched voice. Though there weren’t as many laugh out loud moments, I did find myself laughing uncontrollably through one memorable (again, for all the wrong reasons) scene involving a water slide and Neil’s irritable bowel. For those of you who remember Kevin and Perry Go Large, this scene will jog the memory.
Fans of The Inbetweeners will enjoy the movie but those who have never heard of it and are offended by all of the above should stay away. There are ‘Down Under’ jokes aplenty and some new turns of phrase that will no doubt find themselves in everyday conversation soon.
And do not fear, it seems a third movie could be in the making, with the lads stopping off in Thailand on their way home.