The Inbetweeners Movie

The Inbetweeners Movie, known simply as The Inbetweeners in North America, is a 2011 British coming-of-age teen adventure comedy film based on the E4 sitcom The Inbetweeners, written by series creators Damon Beesley and Iain Morris and directed by Ben Palmer.

The Inbetweeners Movie
Theatrical release poster
Directed byBen Palmer
Written byDamon Beesley
Iain Morris
Based onThe Inbetweeners
by Damon Beesley and Iain Morris
Produced byChristopher Young
StarringSimon Bird
James Buckley
Blake Harrison
Joe Thomas
Narrated bySimon Bird
CinematographyBen Wheeler
Edited byWilliam Webb
Charlie Fawcett
Music byMike Skinner
Production
companies
Distributed byEntertainment Film Distributors
Release date
  • 17 August 2011 (2011-08-17)
Running time
97 minutes[1]
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Budget£3.5 million ($4.9 million)[2]
Box office$88 million[3]

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 received mixed reviews from American critics. It was a considerable 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 finish their A-levels and prepare to leave Rudge Park Comprehensive. To celebrate, the boys decide to go on a "lads holiday" together to Malia, Crete. Arriving in the country, the boys find their accommodation to be a rundown hostel, and venture out later to experience the country's nightlife. In the town centre, the boys are tricked by a rep into visiting a deserted bar, and they meet a group of four girls who are holidaying: Alison, Lucy, Lisa, and Jane. While their initial meeting and conversations do not go smoothly, and Alison is already in a relationship with a local Greek waiter called Nicos, the girls arrange to meet the boys again at the girl's hotel the following day. Simon sees his former girlfriend Carli across the street, but is introduced to her 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 before she returns to England, and Simon promises to meet her there.

The next day, the boys meet the girls at their hotel, but after several mishaps involving Jay and Will, they are kicked out. Jay and Simon get into an argument over Simon's obsession with Carli and they briefly fight each other in the street. Desperate to buy a ticket for the boat party to try to reconcile with Carli, Simon naïvely "sells" all of his clothes to James without receiving payment. It is revealed Jay had bought four boat party tickets, but had torn up Simon's after the fight. Jay and Neil go to a club where they encounter James and his friends and try to befriend them, but James verbally abuses the pair, forcing them to leave. That evening, the four boys meet up and reconcile. The girls appear and Will and Alison, Simon and Lucy, and Jay and Jane all grow closer to each other, while Neil disappears with an older woman. The girls suggest that they all go skinny dipping at the local beach. Jay becomes embarrassed when two men laugh at Jane for being overweight, and an upset Jane leaves him. Alison removes Will's glasses as they strip naked. While trying to find them, Will stumbles upon her boyfriend, Nicos, having sex with another woman and Alison leaves, distraught. In the sea, Lucy and Simon prepare to kiss, but Simon sees Carli on the beach and leaves Lucy alone, angering her. With the girls having left, the boys decide to visit various bars and clubs to get drunk.

On the day of the boat party, the group meet the girls again at the beach, where Alison reconciles with Will and gives him Nicos' ticket to join her on the boat. Elsewhere, Simon apologises to Lucy and she offers him her boat party ticket so that he can be with Carli. On board, Simon witnesses an argument between Carli and James. Carli kisses Simon passionately, but he realises that she is just using him to make James jealous; finally seeing Carli for her true colours, he leaves her. Will and Alison admit their feelings toward each other and Jay apologises to Jane and both start a relationship, while Neil and Lisa do the same. Jay and Jane encounter James who mocks Jane's weight and demands a banknote from Jay so that he can snort cocaine. Jay gets revenge on him by giving James a €20 note that was concealed in his anus, leaving James to unknowingly have faeces on his nose. Simon realises that Lucy is more worthy of his attention than Carli, and decides to swim back to shore to her as a romantic gesture; however, he nearly drowns on the way there. As he is taken back to the beach via air ambulance, Lucy kisses him and they reconcile.

During the credits, the four boys and the girls spend the rest of their holiday together as couples. When the holiday ends, upon their return to England, the group say goodbye at Gatwick Airport and the girls are introduced to the boy's parents.

Cast
From left to right: Joe Thomas, Simon Bird, James Buckley and Blake Harrison

Soundtrack

The official soundtrack consists of:[4]

Songs not on the official soundtrack but featured in the film:

Production

A first draft for The Inbetweeners Movie was completed before the third series was even written. The story remained mostly similar besides small changes such as a scene in which Jay hires a motorbike, pretending he knows how to ride it, but failing by crashing into a wall. This scene was removed during the writing process for the third series as the pair needed a humorous way to open the episode and thought the motor bike scene would be better suited to the episode than the movie.

Principal photography took place in the United Kingdom (London, West Sussex), Magaluf, and Malia, Crete.[5] 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.[6]

Release

Box office

On its first day of release, The Inbetweeners Movie grossed over £2.5 million in 409 cinemas.[7] The film then went on to set a record for the most successful opening weekend ever achieved by a comedy film in the UK, overtaking Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and The Hangover Part II[8] after earning £13.22 million,[9] compared to second-place Rise of the Planet of the Apes which took £2.4 million.[8] The Inbetweeners Movie was confirmed as having the biggest opening weekend for an independent British film.[8] 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.[10] 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
Simon Bird was praised by critics for his performance.

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."[11] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 44 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[12] 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."[13] 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."[14] 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."[15] 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."[16] Australian critic Margaret Pomeranz from At the Movies called the characters "gormless" and said, "I'm giving this one star really generously."[17] She also said that the style of humour in the film was the reason that the British Empire collapsed.[18]

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.[19]

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.[20] 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.[21][22]

In December 2014, parallel with the release of the film's sequel, a special edition with both films was released on DVD.[23]

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
Main article: The Inbetweeners 2

A sequel to the film, titled The Inbetweeners 2, was released in British and Irish cinemas on 6 August 2014.[24] It is set in Australia.[25]

See also

References
  1. "The Inbetweeners Movie (18)". British Board of Film Classification. 5 August 2011. Retrieved 4 August 2013.
  2. "The Inbetweeners Movie breaks UK comedy box office record". TheGuardian.com. 22 August 2011.
  3. "The Inbetweeners Movie (2011)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 12 September 2012.
  4. "The Inbetweeners Movie soundtrack to feature ten songs from Mike Skinner". Metro.co.uk. Archived from the original on 12 October 2011.
  5. "The Inbetweeners movie: Simon Bird reveals filming abroad was carnage". Metro. 9 March 2011. Archived from the original on 4 April 2011. Retrieved 20 January 2014.
  6. "The Inbetweeners Movie - Filming in Malia". Archived from the original on 21 December 2021 – via YouTube.
  7. "The Inbetweeners Movie is a Box Office hit". Gigwise. 18 August 2011.
  8. "Inbetweeners sets box-office benchmark for UK comedy". BBC News. 23 August 2011. Retrieved 10 August 2014.
  9. "Foul-mouthed bear Ted tops film chart". BBC News. 8 August 2012. Retrieved 10 August 2014.
  10. "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy tops UK box office". BBC News. 20 September 2011. Retrieved 10 August 2014.
  11. "The Inbetweeners Movie". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
  12. "The Inbetweeners Movie". Metacritic. Retrieved 12 May 2014.
  13. Freer, Ian. "The Inbetweeners Movie". Empire. Archived from the original on 26 December 2011.
  14. Rose, Steve (17 August 2011). "The Inbetweeners Movie – review". The Guardian. London.
  15. Robey, Tim (18 August 2011). "The Inbetweeners Movie, review". The Daily Telegraph. London.
  16. Lee, Ann (17 August 2011). "The Inbetweeners Movie hailed as 'British American Pie' in first reviews". Metro. Archived from the original on 21 August 2011.
  17. Toomey, Matthew (12 August 2014). "Review: The Inbetweeners 2". The Film Pie. Retrieved 15 August 2014.
  18. Toomey, Matthew (13 August 2014). "Interview - Meeting The Inbetweeners!". The Film Pie. Retrieved 15 August 2014.
  19. "The Inbetweeners Movie gets even better on Blu-ray". Blu-ray Disc Reporter. 27 October 2011. Archived from the original on 26 April 2012. Retrieved 20 January 2014.
  20. Sweney, Mark (14 December 2011). "Inbetweeners DVD set for sales record". The Guardian. London.
  21. Wallop, Harry (17 December 2011). "HMV heads for a record loss". The Daily Telegraph. London.
  22. "Newsbeat - The Inbetweeners Movie is on course to break DVD record". BBC. 15 December 2011. Retrieved 20 January 2014.
  23. "The Inbetweeners Movie 1 & 2 [DVD]". Amazon UK. December 2014. Retrieved 24 December 2014.
  24. "UK and Ireland Release Date". E4 Inbetweeners, Facebook Page. Retrieved 15 March 2014.
  25. Reynolds, Simon (9 May 2014). "The Inbetweeners 2 trailer is here: The gang go Down Under". Digital Spy. Retrieved 10 May 2014.
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