You'll need more than just wellies to contend with The Inbetweeners Movie. Along with the mandatory clunge, viewers will find themselves knee deep in deliciously crude humour and hilarious performances that help ensure a successful transition from television set to cinema. In short, it's pretty gashtastic.
The adventures of the four lustful teens on a booze-drenched holiday in Malia contain enough hilarious and inventive gags to fill out the extended length of the tale compared to their previous escapades. As the mantra goes, what happens on tour stays on tour. So it wouldn't be fair to divulge too many details of the shady shenanigans experienced by Will (Simon Bird), Jay (James Buckley), Simon (Joe Thomas) and Neil (Blake Harrison) after Mr Gilbert gives them a jaw-dropping send off from school.
Let's just say that anyone who has emerged from a lads' holiday with any form of recollection can relate to many of the messy antics, which of course entail doomed and drunken pursuits of the opposite sex, abject humiliation, fallings out, dodgy dancefloor manoeuvres and inappropriate domestic defecation. Admittedly, that last example might be one log too far for many survivors of such a trip. But not all...
Amidst all the talk of gash, clunge, rat, punani or whatever unflattering word used to verbally depict females as sexual objects, there is a refreshing feminine undercurrent to chunks of the movie. This is provided by the quartet of well fleshed out lasses (in terms of character, not size... mostly) encountered by the hapless guys in Malia.
Spearheaded by the alluring Laura Haddock as poor Will's wannabe conquest Alison, they are far more than mere plot functions or eye candy, adding a great deal of emotional intrigue and mirth to the story and are surely worthy of their own spinoff at some stage.
The main stars are undoubtedly of the male variety though, with James Buckley's Jay responsible for the bulk of the howling laughter and cringes. Unlike Simon, whose subplot with his beloved Carli seriously grates, Jay delivers moments of surprising poignancy too - showcasing Buckley's versatility and highlighting the production team's wise move to seek a credible 'coming of age' narrative to underpin the madness.
However, inspiration is distinctly lacking with the movie's ending - as it finishes with a little spurt not even worthy of the fluids emitting from the ejaculating penis so lovingly sunburnt into Will's back. Fortunately, along with some rushed and incongruous editing, it doesn't significantly detract from the excellent work beforehand.
Reliant on the likeable cast to deliver the goods, they do just that. One scene, featuring Will in a compromising situation, works wonderfully purely on the basis of a procession of increasingly comical reaction shots of Simon Bird's unease.
There were justifiable fears that The Inbetweeners Movie would turn out to be a clanger, with a feeling that the three series on E4 had milked every embarrassing teenage masturbatory predicament and m**ge-hunting scenario dry. As it turns out, these pratfalls are indeed still, for want of a more appropriate word, wet. A sensation that one of the lads fails to find when grabbing a granny in a club...
More Inbetweeners Movie coverage:
> The Inbetweeners Movie is "final piece of the jigsaw"
> The Inbetweeners Movie in pictures
> The Inbetweeners Movie trailer: 10 best bits
> Mike Skinner records ten songs for The Inbetweeners Movie
