The Inbetweeners Movie

Plot

Teenage friends Will McKenzie, Simon Cooper, Jay Cartwright, and Neil Sutherland have finished their A-levels and are about to leave Rudge Park Comprehensive, much to the relief of Mr. Gilbert, their sardonic head of sixth form. Within their final week of school, Jay's grandfather dies, Simon is dumped by his girlfriend Carli D'Amato, and Will's estranged father tells him that he has married his much younger mistress (who was responsible for Will's parents' divorce and is only four years older than Will). The boys decide to go on holiday together and Neil books them a holiday to Malia, Crete.

At a quiet, unpopular bar, they meet four girls: Alison, Lucy, Lisa, and Jane. Their initial meeting does not go smoothly, but the girls arrange to meet the boys at their hotel the next day. Outside the bar, Simon sees Carli across the street and talks awkwardly with her before being knocked down by a quad-bike driven by James, a cocky and abusive club rep and Carli's new love interest. She reveals that she is going to an all-day boat party later in the week, and Simon promises to meet her there.

The next day, Jay and Simon get into an argument over Simon's continuing obsession with Carli and Jay's continual false bravado and they brawl in the street until Will and Neil separate the pair. Desperate to buy a ticket for the boat party, 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, Jay angrily tears up two of the four boat party tickets that he secretly bought for all of them the previous night as a surprise. Jay and Neil encounter James and his friends at a bar and they try to break the ice and befriend them, but James brushes it away and verbally abuses the pair and threatens to hurt Jay if they don't leave which upsets Jay. Later that evening, the four boys meet back at the empty bar and make up. The girls then turn up and suggest that they all go skinny dipping at the local beach. Jane attempts to kiss Jay, but when two men poke fun at him over her weight and Jay pulls away, she leaves him behind. Will has better luck with Alison until she spots her boyfriend, Nicos, having sex with another woman, and she leaves distraught by what she's witnessed. In the sea, Lucy and Simon appear to be growing closer, and are about to kiss, but Simon sees Carli on the beach and leaves Lucy alone in the sea.

The next day, they meet the girls again at the beach. Alison gives Will Nicos' ticket, while 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 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 ditches her. Meanwhile, Jay apologises to Jane and they start a relationship as do Will and Alison, and Neil and Lisa. 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 taking a note that was secretly concealed in his anus, and gives it to James. James then snorts cocaine unknowingly walking around with faeces sticking out 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 to swim to shore as a romantic gesture, but he struggles and nearly drowns. As he is loaded into an air ambulance, Lucy kisses him and they reconcile. After the boat party is finished, the other boys and girls visit Simon in hospital, and after his recovery, they all spend the rest of their holiday together as couples. 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 a John Rambo style.

Cast

List of cast members:

Soundtrack

The official soundtrack consists of:

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

Production

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

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 Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason 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

The Inbetweeners Movie received mostly positive reviews upon its original United Kingdom release in August 2011. Following release in the United States in September 2012, critical reaction was less favourable, with the film at first holding a 75% score on Rotten Tomatoes and having since dropped to 54%, with the site's consensus "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." At the website Metacritic, which uses a normalized rating system, the film received a mixed rating of 44/100 based on 17 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.

American adaptation

An American version, titled Virgins America, will be directed by Jim Field Smith. Whether Morris and Beesley have involvement is unknown.