The Inbetweeners 2 (2014)

Look, I'm not going to sit here and pretend The Inbetweeners 2 is a disaster. It isn't. But I'm also not going to pretend it's anything more than a decent enough way to spend an hour and a half if you've got mates round and no strong opinions about what to watch. Meh is probably the most honest word for it. Watchable meh, but meh all the same.

The best moments are genuinely funny. Will attempting to be cool with a guitar is exactly the kind of spectacular, cringe-inducing failure the character was built for. Neil feeding dolphins a burger is the sort of gloriously stupid, pitch-perfect Neil thing that makes you remember why you loved these lads in the first place. And any scene where Simon gets publicly humiliated or Jay opens his mouth and something monumentally idiotic falls out still gets a proper laugh out of me. Those bits absolutely scratch the Inbetweeners itch. The chemistry between the four of them hasn't gone anywhere, and there's a warmth underneath all the grossness that the show always had.

But here's the honest truth: a lot of this is retreading. The gang are still clueless, still desperate, still catastrophically bad at life, and for the first film that was perfect, because it felt awkward and real and like something you'd lived through yourself in some minor way. Here, after multiple series and The Inbetweeners Movie, the formula is starting to show its age. The desperation doesn't feel earned anymore, it just feels like a routine. A well-performed routine, sure, but a routine. Some of the subplots fizzle out without going anywhere interesting, and there are stretches where the laughs dry up completely and you're just waiting for the next good bit.

Then there's the poo gag. And look, I laughed. I'm not made of stone. But the second it happened I thought: Kevin and Perry Go Large did this. Nearly twenty years before this film came out, it did essentially the same gag, and it did it bigger and dafter and with more commitment. That's not a dealbreaker, comedy borrows from itself constantly, but it does underline the sense that the writers were working a bit too hard to top themselves and ended up just echoing something that already existed.

That's the central problem with The Inbetweeners 2. The first film worked because it took the series somewhere that felt like a genuine, slightly bittersweet conclusion, a summer of chaos and growing up just enough. This one occasionally feels like it was made because the first film made a lot of money, which, fair enough, but you can feel the strain of justifying everyone being back together and back to square one. It's a long, slightly tired reunion special that has some brilliant moments scattered through it but can't quite sustain the energy across its full running time.

Three stars. Worth a watch with the right crowd, and the lads are still good value. Just don't go in expecting it to match what came before.

Rating: ★★★  | Year: 2014  | Watched: 2025-05-16

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Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Rent: Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · Sky Store · YouTube
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Google Play Movies · Sky Store
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

Watch in the US
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US

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