Inbetweeners

[Purves Grundy]

Inbetweeners

Who needs DVDs when you've got 4od? I can't believe I missed such a brilliant series until now. I feel like I've bust a rib, laughing.

[wingco]

Inbetweeners

Agree entirely with PG. The film was excellent - pretty much flawless, I thought - and although I do know the series, it did occur to me that no prior knowledge of it was required to get the movie version. Whereas some Hollywood comedies take far too much time off gag duty to develop the underlying pathos, Inbetweeners has all of that but dispatches it in double quick time and keeps the flow of jokes coming.

So many highlights - Greg Davies's giving vent to the actual contents of the thought bubbles of every teacher in his farewell to the sixth formers speech, the "back off, bitch" moment (it's fine, honestly), the arrival at the hotel . . . essentially, it was one long, sustained highlight. A film that deserves every last bit of its success - ignore the slightly patronising review in The Guardian, which withholds a couple of stars because it's not some avant garde deconstruction of the Brits on holiday film genre. Don't wait till DVD, see this as soon as possible, at the cinema, I urge you.

[Purves Grundy]

Inbetweeners

Totally agree. Wingco's right that the whole thing was one sustained highlight, although the bit that actually had me weeping with laughter was when the boys try their moves in the nightclub. The whole thing was pretty much flawless and the writing was worthy of Clement & le Frenais at their peak. I can't really give higher praise than that.

[Purves Grundy]

Inbetweeners

So, finished the whole series last night. It's stunningly good, with at most 2 of the 18 episodes being below-par. That's a hell of a success rate.

Quite apart from the obvious highlights mentioned so far (fwends, wardrobe malfunction and the dirty talk), what absolutely did for me was Jay's motorbike crash. Any other series would have made a huge production number out of it, with him swerving across the road, between lorries, before flying through the air into a duckpond or something. Not Inbetweeners. He just wobbles across the car park, stumbles into a wall and bashes his head on a door. So much funnier for being right. That's exactly how Jay would crash a motorbike.

Best individual episode is probably either the Swanage field trip, or the Duke of Edinburgh awards ("Duke of Spastic").

[Hofzinser]

Inbetweeners

I have to belatedly eat my words from page one on this one. Having initially been scpetical, to say the least, Inbetweeners has grown on me quite considerably and, well, yeah, it's brilliant, and I was wrong. Ah well, had to happen sooner or later.

[Jimmy Bignutz]

Inbetweeners

Speaking of 4oD, Purves, did you ever get round to watching PhoneShop?

[pebblethefish]

Inbetweeners

Purves Grundy wrote:

or the Duke of Edinburgh awards ("Duke of Spastic").

Sorry Purves, but I have to take issue with you on this. Surely the winning line from that episode has to be "Is Prince Charles cross with us sir?"

[Purves Grundy]

Inbetweeners

Jimmy Bignutz wrote:

Speaking of 4oD, Purves, did you ever get round to watching PhoneShop?

Gonna start watching it tonight.

[Mumpo]

Inbetweeners

Fans of wee and fanny based material featuring cast members from The Inbetweeners might also like to watch Chickens, which seemed to plough largely the same furrow.

[Freestyling buck wilding Stijn Stijnen]

Inbetweeners

Going to see the inbetweeners movie this evening, I've liked how it became progressively funnier with each new series.

Put me in with the pro-phoneshop camp as well, the episode where the boss alludes to his love of reggae by playing the theme to QI whilst swaggering across the shopfloor toking on a bifta, was, as mentioned by another poster, pants-pissingly funny, it's a car crash of a midlife crisis, he nails it.

Martin Trenaman, take a bow.

[Purves Grundy]

Inbetweeners

Er, no, Mumpo. There's one major difference between Inbetweeners and Chickens, in that the writers of Inbetweeners remembered to include some jokes and funny lines in the script.

The production, set design, cinematography, lighting and costume design of Chickens were all superb. Which only went the ram it down the viewer's throat that one really cannot polish a turd.

[Sam]

Inbetweeners

I really, really, really hope the film gets a release in Argentina (the TV series is shown here on MTV Latin America, so it's not an unfounded hope), because if the only way my flatmate and I can see it is by torrenting it, we won't be pleased.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Inbetweeners

Purves Grundy wrote:

Er, no, Mumpo. There's one major difference between Inbetweeners and Chickens, in that the writers of Inbetweeners remembered to include some jokes and funny lines in the script.

The production, set design, cinematography, lighting and costume design of Chickens were all superb. Which only went the ram it down the viewer's throat that one really cannot polish a turd.

I've never trusted you on comedy for your fandom of Coupling. I didn't mind it because most of the time I was reliving the time it's male lead played my bowling from square leg. While also rehearsing my "I've known Jack for more years than I care to remember" chat-up lines of posh girls.

But I couldn't sleep the other night, and it was on. It was quite good, though it always overstretched jokes. Was that deliberate, "layered", or something?

[E10 Rifle]

Inbetweeners

Did the "I've known Jack..." chat-up lines work? Or did you have to follow that up with lengthy treatises on his bowling as a clincher?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Inbetweeners

What does "worked" really mean? What is a "girlfriend" anyway?

[E10 Rifle]

Inbetweeners

"Worked" I'd take as "having an informed and interesting conversation about cricket with an attractive woman"

[Amor de Cosmos]

Inbetweeners

I had all three series in one gulp — so to speak — last week. Admittedly that wasn't the very best way to watch them, the humour is somewhat repetitive in concentrated doses, nevertheless I laughed loud enough on several occasions to scare the cat. I think it works so well because, as has been pointed out, most of us cringe with recognition. I was, to some extent, at least three of those characters during my adolescence.

I'll be interested in La Signora's take. She generally likes gross-out comedy but I'm not certain how much of this she'll relate to. I was talking about it with my stepson, who thought it hilarious, but his partner just didn't. She didn't hate it but found nothing there for her. It is a "guy" show, which isn't a criticism just a fact. As someone has mentioned, Tara aside, the female characters are pretty much ciphers. In a twenty-five minute fast-paced program that probably can't be helped. I'd hope for more from the movie though, because I'm not sure, as it stands, the concept would stretch to full feature length.

[Wyatt Earp]

Inbetweeners

I've had plenty of conversations that were:

[ul]
informed and interesting;
about cricket;
with an attractive woman.
[/ul]

Plus all combinations of two drawn from those. But now I come to think about it, rarely all three at once.

[diggedy derek]

Inbetweeners

I'm really glad people have been raving about this on here, as I probably wouldn't have checked it out otherwise. It's brilliant.

I figured it was just be straight-up gross-out comedy, and while there are a few such moments, the comedy is all about social norms and peer pressure. For instance the scene where Will shits himself while taking an exam is all carried by his reaction rather than shown/heard. All in the dialogue: "I thought it was a fart... I thought it was safe!". Although there's a lot of sick/cum/shit/farts, it's a corollary of the gags rather than the cause of it.

It's really touching, too. For instance Jay's character is oddly the most sympathetic, despite his continual knob boasts and bender put-downs. The bit where he gets dumped, and the others agree quietly to never mention it to him, has a genuine blokey solidarity about it.

There's a couple of aspects of the dialogue and the performances which are beautifully understated and hint at a kind of moral compass there. The line "brilliant" comes out again and again after particularly gross jokes, but there's often a kind of sarcastic frustration with such immaturity. It means: this is just a passing phase.

Also the gay jokes are actually really nuanced. "Your car is gay" "No it's not!" "It is a bit gay." It's a continual process of negotiation over what's cool and what's not, and you instinctively feel there's nothing nasty about it at all.

Oddly, it feels realistic precisely because it captures the fantasy of the teenage mind. There are countless lines which are absurd but feel like they were from my teenage years: "The Swanage field trip is legendary for carnage." It captures brilliantly the way kids mythologise.

You guys know all this, but just to register my enormous enjoyment of this. Can't wait to see the film.

So enough of this boring bollocks, why don't I just list the bits which are a right fcking laugh?

1. Neil punching the fish
2. "I'm going to fck your fcking fanny off you twat!"
3. Jay trying to close the lid of the laptop during his 'dead hand' wank
4. Mr Gilbert passim.
5. Simon getting wanked off by a younger girl in the school disco. Jay: "getting a bit weird, now."

[Fussbudget]

Inbetweeners

Amor de Cosmos wrote:

I'll be interested in La Signora's take. She generally likes gross-out comedy but I'm not certain how much of this she'll relate to. I was talking about it with my stepson, who thought it hilarious, but his partner just didn't. She didn't hate it but found nothing there for her. It is a "guy" show, which isn't a criticism just a fact. As someone has mentioned, Tara aside, the female characters are pretty much ciphers.

Yup, that sums up my feelings on the film. It was an alright watch but I don't think I laughed a single time. Sw2 assures me that the series is miles funnier with lots more jokes so I might relent and give it a go, but if it's the same kind of cock jokes I can't imagine I'd like it much more.

I mean, I get that the cock jokes are meant to be crap and to underline how pathetic teenage boys are but that only really works if you can relate to the characters, and I couldn't relate to any of them at all, all I could see was four irredeemable twats. As has been mentioned the female characters are complete afterthoughts, the blonde one that Will meets in particular is so far removed from even remotely acting like a human being that it actually made me quite angry.

[Sam]

Inbetweeners

You can't be serious, Fussbudget. She's like any number of the girls I went to secondary school with (right down to the fact that she seems to show occasional glimpses of being a nice person behind the popular girl facade). Or at least, how I saw them at the time (and I'd have undeniably been more similar to Will than to any of the others).

I've just read the whole thread again, and realised that 'my flatmate' mentioned in my previous post on this thread is the girl who knows Jay's real-life family, who I mentioned on the first page. I'd forgotten about that.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Inbetweeners

She's like any number of the girls I went to secondary school with (right down to the fact that she seems to show occasional glimpses of being a nice person behind the popular girl facade).

She's "like" them from a strictly male perspective though. The series never shows the few female characters talking with each other, or even being together, so we have no idea how she relates to other girls and vice-versa.

As it turned out La Signora was also ho-hum about the two shows we watched together and has shown no inclination to view any others. She smiled a few times but that's all, and she used to teach boys of exactly that age.

[Fussbudget]

Inbetweeners

Hold on Sam, are we talking about the same one? Not even getting into how she looks about ten years older than the rest of the cast, do you think that *SPOILER ALERT* her romance with Will is in any way realistic? She's sitting in a club with some friends, some awkward creepy nerd comes to their table, insults her and her boyfriend with some unamusing racist stereotypes, and BAM! she is entranced enough to go skinny-dipping with him? What the actual fuck. Her "relationship" with her boyfriend is every bit as ham-fisted and nonsensical. All the other female characters at least bear some vague resemblance to actual teenage girls, but she is such a one-dimensional narrative prop that it is almost insulting.

[Purves Grundy]

Inbetweeners

Fussbudget wrote:

I mean, I get that the cock jokes are meant to be crap and to underline how pathetic teenage boys are but that only really works if you can relate to the characters, and I couldn't relate to any of them at all, all I could see was four irredeemable twats.

No, they are redeemable twats. That's the point (unless you despise every single man above the age of 21, who will have all passed through their own Inbetweeners phase).

Tell you what, though, I would love to see an equivalent series from a female perspective. As far as I'm aware nothing like that has ever been done.

[Fussbudget]

Inbetweeners

Purves Grundy wrote:

No, they are redeemable twats. That's the point (unless you despise every single man above the age of 21, who will have all passed through their own Inbetweeners phase).

Well I didn't before, but after seeing that film and reading how many men recognise themselves in the characters I'm certainly not far off