'The Inbetweeners 2' review by Jake Boyle
Forget grieving families, starving children and oppressed minorities. True struggle is being a British teenager who thinks that The Inbetweeners is a little bit shit. My life is hard. If you're somebody who takes an opposing view on the boys from Rudge Park (which, demographically speaking, is possibly all of you) this might be a review to skip. Not that I think The Inbetweeners 2 is bad, exactly, but I'm likely going to be fairly insulting to its fan base. Sorry, snobbery never rests.
That said, I do think it's kind of bad. The immaturity is demonstrably self-aware, but there's still not enough smarts on display to pacify the increasingly grating stupidity of some of the humour. I probably shouldn't have high expectations for a franchise in which the most popular joke is putting a variety of words in front of 'wanker', but by the time a guy with a faeces-covered face starts projectile vomiting, it's hard not to feel that it's hit a new low. Aside from being actively puerile, some of the jokes simply aren't funny - Will and Simon repeatedly shouting "grow up" at each other quickly descends from dull to actively irritating, and Jay's graphic and obviously false stories about the sex he's having got old by the end of the first series. There's some good moments surrounding all of this - reliably dimwitted Neil is as entertaining as ever, in particular during an incident involving a dolphin, and Simon being forced to deal with a lunatic girlfriend allows him to display some highly amusing exasperation. But a comedy where a third of the jokes don't make me laugh, and a further third of them actually annoy me is taking more than a few steps down the wrong path.
The performances are all fine, if perhaps slightly lazier than in past installments. There's dabblings with character development, although some of it is the same character development from the first film, only more so. The boys still remain (in my opinion) as mildly loathsome prats, but the comedy is mostly at their expense, so there's not much need to feel any sympathy for them. Towards the end, there are a few more tender moments, even reaching towards heartfelt, that I'm sure would have made an impact on somebody who actually likes The Inbetweeners. A problem with the film - especially noticeable when one is attempting to construct a review of it - is that there's nothing to the film without the jokes. Other comedies, both better and worse, tend to contain stories, character arcs, maybe even some messages and beliefs at their core. Any of those that can temporarily be glimpsed whilst watching this have all definitely faded by the end, and that's a notable drawback to somebody who didn't think the things that were there were particularly funny.
Unwise as it is of me to point this out, a review of The Inbetweeners 2 seems fairly pointless. If you liked what has come before, you'll probably like this one. If you didn't, you probably won't. It's more of the same with enough unexplored territory (both in dialogue and in geographical terms) that it's suitably original. I sort-of liked it, but I sort-of liked the first film more. More than anything else I think this suggests it's time to pack it in and quit while they're (relatively) ahead; the actors are mostly in their thirties, there's only so many times you can get laughs from using assorted synonyms for 'vagina', and the law of diminishing returns is gently rapping, rapping at the chamber door.
The performances are all fine, if perhaps slightly lazier than in past installments. There's dabblings with character development, although some of it is the same character development from the first film, only more so. The boys still remain (in my opinion) as mildly loathsome prats, but the comedy is mostly at their expense, so there's not much need to feel any sympathy for them. Towards the end, there are a few more tender moments, even reaching towards heartfelt, that I'm sure would have made an impact on somebody who actually likes The Inbetweeners. A problem with the film - especially noticeable when one is attempting to construct a review of it - is that there's nothing to the film without the jokes. Other comedies, both better and worse, tend to contain stories, character arcs, maybe even some messages and beliefs at their core. Any of those that can temporarily be glimpsed whilst watching this have all definitely faded by the end, and that's a notable drawback to somebody who didn't think the things that were there were particularly funny.
Unwise as it is of me to point this out, a review of The Inbetweeners 2 seems fairly pointless. If you liked what has come before, you'll probably like this one. If you didn't, you probably won't. It's more of the same with enough unexplored territory (both in dialogue and in geographical terms) that it's suitably original. I sort-of liked it, but I sort-of liked the first film more. More than anything else I think this suggests it's time to pack it in and quit while they're (relatively) ahead; the actors are mostly in their thirties, there's only so many times you can get laughs from using assorted synonyms for 'vagina', and the law of diminishing returns is gently rapping, rapping at the chamber door.
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