The Inbetweeners Movie is the highest grossing British comedy of all time. So why did a relatively low budget movie based on a foreign television show make so much money? Well I think it comes down to two factors: 1. It was a raunchy teen comedy (a genre believed to be dying) 2. The large fan-base that the show has accumulated over time. Now despite the shockingly large amount of cash this film made, I think that this move to the big screen has the two factors conflicting with each other.
I attribute the success of the original television show to the universality of the characters and situations. The show realistically shows what it is like to be a teenage male in the suburbs, a demographic that has been pandered to since it was first discovered to be a money maker in the 1960's. The show isn't just for teenage boys though, it is a series written with a lot of heart and intelligence Most of the time the boys are ridiculed and disparaged, instead of just getting into wacky antics and then winning the women over like in your typical American Pie knock off. The guys in Inbetweeners are unmistakably losers, they never get the girls and are constantly making buffoons out of themselves while trying too. The one thing they do have is their close-knit friendship.
Will (the nerdy newcomer), Simon (the hopelessly romantic schlep), Neil (the kind-hearted idiot), and Jay (the pseudo-lady's man) could have all fallen into their respective archetypal character's cliches. But instead the series' writers treat the characters with such honesty that they feel real. The show's creators Iain Morris and Damon Beesley wrote every episode of series and each episode feels like a genuine experience for the characters as they seem to mature, reluctantly albeit. And when it ended with a simple camping trip before they all went their separate ways it felt like an authentic way to end the series.
The Inbetweeners movie takes it upon itself to tack on an extra ending to the series. And it falls into many of the typical traps a movie based on a TV show falls into. First of all, they amp everything up too much for the "transition to the big screen". By doing this they limit a lot of the subtleties that made the show so great in the first place. And secondly it feels like the writers are merely asking the audience to "watch these characters get into an adventure" instead of showing a story about the characters themselves. The movie is light and charming and feels like a weightless romp in comparison to the TV show. Sure the characters all mature at the very end of the movie, but after watching them act like idiots the whole film this sudden revelation for all four characters feels disingenuous.
I mean, each character learning that their respective negative personality trait was wrong at the exact same is the type of cliche that the original series steered clear of. In fact the whole movie is filled with stuff like that. The four main characters act like irredeemable assholes yet the women still swoon. This is the antithesis of what that show was about. This movie doesn't feel realistic in the slightest. It almost feels like the ending of this movie exists in some strange alternate universe of the original show where everything works out and everybody learns "a very valuable lesson"
Now that's not to say that this movie was all bad. In fact I think it succeeded on a few levels. The film captures all the raunchy glory of the original show, although it is a bit too reliant on gross out humor. It is also nice to have a farewell to all the secondary characters like the main character's parents and especially Greg Davies as the always funny Headmaster Gilbert. But the main attraction of this film is seeing the characters one last time. I'm not gonna lie, I fell in love with the four main characters and seeing them in a new adventure was well worth it.
The problem with that is those unfamiliar with the show have no reason to love these characters. Each character is broader than they were in the show, especially Simon who acts as though he has a serious mental deficiency throughout the film. I could actually understand why many film goers would dismiss this movie as a typical shitty teen comedy. And I wouldn't blame them if they did. The film is about the four friends having "one last adventure" on a summer vacation to Crete. They wear funny t-shirts, hit on girls, drink a lot of booze, and we see more than enough penises. And this movie offers quite a few laughs but what it doesn't offer enough of is heart, unfortunately that is what makes a film like this work (a la Superbad, Clerks). And it is something that the original series had in spades.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChXiZh6Y1AE
-SP McDonald
No comments:
Post a Comment