The Inbetweeners 2

Details

Following the fun and disasters of their holiday in Malia, the boys are back home and attempting to get on with their lives. Will is now at university in Bristol and invites Simon and Neil to a party, although it doesn't take long for the group to realise that (a) the party isn't fancy dress, despite them arriving dressed as Harry Potter characters, (b) they aren't particularly welcome and (c) Neil has discovered a useful app on his phone called Grindr. Normal service has been well and truly resumed.

However, one of the boys is missing. Jay is currently in Australia - "the sex capital of the world" - on his gap year. When Neil receives an email explaining the virtues of Australian girls, their love of everything Pommie and their supposed fondness for anal sex, the boys become rather jealous of Jay's apparently amazing new life.

Things become even more impressive when Jay invites them to visit. According to him, he's receiving daily morning blow jobs, working as a DJ in the biggest club in Sydney under the stage name "DJ Big Penis" and living in a mansion filled with beautiful and extremely willing women. It's an invitation the boys simply can't turn down.

With Simon's girlfriend Lucy gradually turning into a control freak - burning his trainers and cutting up his hoodies just in case he decides to stray - and Will discovering that university life hasn't transformed him into the popular intellectual he'd hoped to become, it doesn't take long for the boys to accept Jay's offer. So it's time to say "G'day mate", pack the rucksacks, kiss the parents goodbye - well, they all try to kiss Will's mother - and head off on another adventure.

Unfortunately, upon arriving in Australia they quickly discover that all is not quite as Jay described it. Rather than being a superstar DJ, he actually works in the club toilets handing out aftershave and towels. His luxury transport is an ageing car covered with Peter Andre artwork and, instead of living in a mansion full of beautiful women, he's sleeping in a tent on his uncle's front lawn. You'd have thought by now that the boys would realise Jay's stories should be taken with an extremely large pinch of salt.

With no mansion and no endless supply of willing women, Will convinces the others to embark on a proper travelling experience and see some of Australia. Naturally, their cultural expedition doesn't proceed entirely according to plan.

What follows involves an unintentional wedding proposal, sing-songs around a campfire, an IBS-related incident at a water park that could put you off water slides for life and a potentially deadly trip into the scorching Australian outback. Along the way, the boys also discover the real reason Jay travelled halfway around the world in the first place.

Picture & Sound

The picture is sharp and detailed with a good range of colours and contrast levels. Australia provides the filmmakers with an enormous variety of colourful locations and the beaches and landscapes look suitably inviting - although perhaps slightly less so once the boys head into the outback. Bright oranges, yellows, blues and greens are all out in force, whilst black levels remain solid throughout.

There's no obvious artifacting or outlining to worry about and the transfer remains clean and detailed throughout. In fact, picture-wise, you could probably say that this Blu-ray is pretty much "bang on the money". It's certainly a substantial step up from the deliberately less polished appearance of the original television series.

The audio is provided by a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack, sampled at 48kHz with an average bitrate of around 2385Kbps. It's largely dialogue-driven, with the familiar musical style associated with The Inbetweeners taking precedence. Fortunately, the dialogue remains crystal clear in the centre channel and there's some decent stereo steering across the front soundstage.

Although the opening scenes are impressively busy, the surround channels tend to be used rather sparingly and, other than the nightclub material, I can't say I noticed a great deal of activity from the subwoofer. Still, given that this isn't a huge Hollywood action blockbuster but a relatively modest British comedy, the soundtrack does everything required of it.

Nevertheless, whilst the Blu-ray unquestionably looks good, whether the audio presentation alone offers enough of an improvement over the standard DVD to warrant an upgrade is rather more debatable. Visually, however, those bright Australian locations certainly benefit from the additional definition.

Menu & Extras

The menu is scored and pleasantly animated, with clips from the film playing in the background and the various options displayed on road-sign-style buttons. The layout can initially be a little confusing to navigate, but once you've got the hang of it everything is easy enough to find.

Extras-wise, there's a pretty decent selection on offer, with two audio commentaries and several featurettes providing a good insight into the production.

First up are the two Audio Commentaries. Given the genuine banter between the actors, the Audio Commentary with Simon Bird, James Buckley, Blake Harrison & Joe Thomas soon descends into chaos, with insults constantly being thrown between them. It eventually becomes something more akin to a pub conversation after a couple of pints of shandy.

With relatively little of interest to learn, I quickly became bored and moved on to the far more informative Audio Commentary with Writers Iain Morris & Damon Beesley. The pair point out various references to other films, discuss the Australian locations and explain how some of the more complicated sequences were filmed, including the all-important continuous shot involving Jay.

It's not what I'd call a "must listen" for casual fans of the series, but anyone interested in the filmmaking process should find plenty of useful information about the locations and how the production was put together.

Next is the twenty-one-minute From the East End to the Outback. What initially starts out as lots of messing about from Simon Bird, James Buckley, Blake Harrison and Joe Thomas soon develops into something considerably more interesting. Along with clips from the script read-through - interspersed with assorted silly games such as "dolphin baseball" - there are interviews with the cast and crew, footage from the Australian location-scouting trip and details of how the opening and single-shot mansion sequences were filmed. Interesting stuff.

If you enjoy watching people messing about, swearing and generally fluffing their lines, then the fifteen-minute Blooper Reel will be right up your street. The rest of us can skip ahead to the sixteen minutes of Deleted Scenes, some of which are rather more interesting than others. Several remain in rough-cut form, whilst material such as the additional conversation and incident aboard the flight to Australia was presumably removed for pacing purposes.

Things are rounded off nicely with the Teaser Trailer.

Overall

During the promotional tour for the film, the cast and crew repeatedly implied that they'd taken The Inbetweeners about as far as it could go and that this would probably be the end of the boys' adventures. Perhaps they're right, but like the American Pie films that came before them, given the right scriptwriters I'm sure there are still plenty of madcap situations waiting for Will, Simon, Jay and Neil.

After all, these characters don't suddenly stop being dysfunctional simply because they've left school. University, employment and adult relationships potentially offer just as many opportunities for disaster. How about fatherhood, a stag party or even a wedding for one of the unfortunate four? Tell you what, I'll even have a go at writing the script - for a modest 5% fee - because I'm sure Will has quite a few more rants and plenty more mishaps left in him yet.

And given that The Inbetweeners 2 became the biggest British comedy hit of 2014, there must surely be more money left in the franchise. I'm equally sure that particular fact hasn't escaped the attention of the production team or, more importantly, the people controlling the purse strings.

I just hope Simon Bird, James Buckley, Blake Harrison and Joe Thomas haven't moved far enough along in their careers to completely rule out another adventure. After all, it's not as though they're Hollywood A-listers demanding bowls of red M&Ms and spring water collected from the peaks of the Himalayas and personally blessed by the local monks.

As for the film itself, taking the boys out of Britain and dumping them on the other side of the world proves to be an effective way of giving the familiar formula another lease of life. The characters haven't fundamentally changed - Jay still lies about absolutely everything, Will still believes he's more intelligent than everybody around him, Simon remains hopeless with relationships and Neil continues to exist happily on his own wavelength - but Australia gives them a completely new collection of situations in which to embarrass themselves.

It's also pleasing that underneath all the crude humour there's still some genuine affection for the characters. Jay's ridiculous stories about his glamorous Australian lifestyle are exactly what you'd expect, but the eventual revelation of why he's really there adds a little more substance to proceedings. For all the abuse they continually throw at one another, the four boys remain friends and that relationship has always been one of the strengths of The Inbetweeners.

Naturally, subtlety isn't particularly high on the agenda. If you thought the television series or first film occasionally pushed the boundaries of good taste, there are moments here which enthusiastically charge straight through them. The now infamous water-park sequence is probably the most obvious example and is simultaneously revolting, ridiculous and very funny. You'll certainly never look at a water slide in quite the same way again.

The film carries a 15 certificate, although the supplementary material created an unusual problem for the home-video release. According to the BBFC, around eleven minutes of material contained within the deleted scenes would have required cuts for the overall package to retain its 15 certificate. An uncut version could instead have been released at 18, but doing so would obviously have reduced the potential audience. As such, I can't imagine an uncut special edition appearing any time soon - unless, of course, somebody eventually decides there's money to be made from an anniversary release.

Having received the British Comedy Award for Best Comedy Film, The Inbetweeners 2 is a crude and crazy laugh from beginning to end. If you're a fan of the original E4 television series then you're almost certainly going to enjoy another collection of the boys' disastrous sexual misadventures. Simon Bird, James Buckley, Blake Harrison and Joe Thomas slip effortlessly back into their familiar roles and their chemistry remains as important to the film as any of the increasingly outrageous situations thrown at them.

Complete with a decent collection of extras and enough crude sexual innuendo to make the Carry On team blush, this British take on the likes of Porky's and American Pie is a cracker. Whether it really does prove to be the final outing remains to be seen, but if it is, then at least the boys have gone out on a suitably ridiculous high.

You really should grab yourself a copy. Just remember not to watch it when Grandma comes to visit.

Oh, and one final word of warning - this film may put you off water slides for life...

Special features

• Audio Commentary with Simon Bird, James Buckley, Blake Harrison & Joe Thomas
• Audio Commentary with Writers Iain Morris & Damon Beesley
• Behind the Scenes Featurette
• Extended and Deleted Scenes
• Blooper Reel
• From the East End to the Outback Featurette
• Teaser Trailer