The Inbetweeners 2 (15) 

Running time: 96 minutes  

Starring: Simon Bird, James Buckley, Blake Harrison, Joe Thomas, Emily Berrington, Belinda Stewart-Wilson, Tamla Kari.

Directors: Iain Morris, Damon Beesley.

SOME of the Inbetweeners may have bagged jobs. Some of them may have even found girlfriends, but thankfully The Inbetweeners 2, the comedy series' second foray onto the big screen, shows our fumbling foursome back on reassuringly awkward form.

And with three hugely popular E4 series behind them and the most successful British comedy of all time to their name in their first film, there's no need to change the discomfiting formula here.

Although almost a year has passed since the lads' holiday to Malia, the four anti-heroes haven't matured in the slightest.

Despite getting a place at Bristol University, Will (Simon Bird) is still chronically uncool and is yet to make any real mates on campus; hapless Simon (Joe Cooper) isn't faring much better up in Sheffield where he's lumbered himself with a demanding girlfriend who destroys his hoodies; randy Jay (James Buckley) has moved to Australia but is working in a toilet and sleeping in a tent in his uncle's garden; and dim-witted Neil (Blake Harrison) has somehow landed a job in the bank but is still as gullible as ever.

Fed up with their lives and enticed by Jay's boastful emails about his conquests with Kylie and Dannii Minogue and five-star lifestyle, Will, Simon and Neil decide to surprise him by heading down under for a four-week break.

Predictably, Jay has been fibbing about his 'DJ' job and his bed posts have no more notches in them than before he left Blighty.

In fact, it turns out that he actually misses his ex-girlfriend Jane (Lydia Rose Bewley).

Rather than kip on Jay's bullying uncle's lawn, the gang tag along with Will's prep school classmate, the popular and pretty Katie (Emily Berrington), who he bumps into, and head to the traveller paradise Byron Bay in a car that has a mural of Peter Andre's face on the side of it.

When it looks like Katie is interested in him, Will tries to woo her, giving a toe curling performance on an acoustic guitar and then racing beefed up love rival Ben (Freddie Stroma) in a stomach-churning water park ride complete with high-octane bodily functions.

The 'bants', as Jay and Neil would call them, come thick, fast and foul here, and each of the four friends has their own tortuous meltdown, with varying degrees of putridity and penis jokes bandied around.

Gross, puerile and filled with playground gags, The Inbetweeners 2 is everything you'd expect it to be.

Keeley Bolger

5/10