Starring Simon Bird, Blake Harrison, James Buckley, Joe Thomas
Directed by Ben Palmer

So the boys from Rudge Park Comprehensive get their own movie. Historically, sun-based spin-offs of British sitcoms have proved very popular but although there have been some excellent comedies over the last two decades, there haven’t really been any naturally suited to gags about hotel mix-ups or dodgy beach wear. As a result, the whole concept must be nearing antique status. But then along came E4’s hilariously crude The Inbetweeners. Three series worth of watching the increasingly dysfunctional lives of Will, Simon, Neil and Jay now appears to have been the perfect set up for a reboot.

We revisit the four just as they finish school and are gearing up for two weeks of beer, sex and mayhem on the island of Crete. Following a typically awkward send off from their respective parents, the lads (kitted out in some truly awful ‘on tour’ t-shirts) hit the airport. In truth there’s not much of a set narrative to speak of; suffice to say that things don’t go exactly to plan, each meets their match with a member of the opposite gender and the various tropes of the boys’ personalities delight and frustrate accordingly.

So is it any good? The Inbetweeners Movie works and doesn’t quite work in more or less equal measure. Where it works well is with its aforementioned natural suitability to the set up; you don’t exactly need to stretch the imagination to see why four testosterone fueled teenagers might wish to leg it off on a hedonistic sun holiday. A very entertaining extended opening sequence makes good work of setting up each characters’ pre holiday mood and we get a dose of nearly every periphery character from the series without it seeming sloppy or rushed (Mr Gilbert’s end of term speech is a particular highlight).

The lesser moments kick in after the first night or two on holiday when the pace slows down considerably. In its television format The Inbetweeners is 25 minutes of sharply written comedy and it’s after roughly that amount of time that you start to notice the film struggling to reach its run time of 97 minutes. Unfortunately this leads to some drawn out stretches where you’re either ahead of the gag or just wanting some scenes to get a move on.

That said, I don’t wish to paint too negative a point on it. In fact, ironically, it’s the very quality of the show that steals some of the film’s lustre; the hard and fast humour, so flawless in less than 30 minutes, just doesn’t expand to three times that. But it would have been worse to try and compensate by adding in too many story strands or by throwing in a celebrity cameo or two.

All in all, The Inbetweeners Movie has some great gags and is a likeable and entertaining send off to brilliant series that had success went way beyond its target audience. And at a release time of just over one week, the film has already done that too.