The Inbetweeners 2

Plot

It is the lead up to the Easter holidays, and Will, Neil and Jay's respective relationships with Alison, Lisa and Jane of the first film have ended.

Will is studying at university in Bristol while Simon is studying in Sheffield. Will is ostracised by his peers at university, while Simon is with his girlfriend Lucy and friend Pete. Neil works in a bank and Jay is taking a gap year in Australia.

Simon is unhappy with his relationship with Lucy, who has become obsessive and abusive. During the film, Lucy sends various videos to Simon of her destroying his treasured belongings, such as cutting up his hoodies, burning his trainers and microwaving his PlayStation.

While Neil and Simon visit Will at the University of Bristol, Jay emails them, claiming that he is a DJ at a popular nightclub in Sydney and lives in a mansion. The trio decide to go to Australia to visit Jay.

Upon arrival in Sydney, they discover that Jay works as a nightclub toilet attendant and lives in a tent at his uncle Bryan's house. At the nightclub, Will is reunited with Katie, a girl he studied with in private school, who is backpacking. At her request, Will agrees to join her at Byron Bay. At Bryan's house, Simon attempts to break up with Lucy over Skype, but Bryan tricks her into thinking Simon is proposing and Lucy agrees to marry him.

The boys meet Katie who is with a group of backpackers. While Will tries to fit in with the backpackers, they mock him upon realising that he is a holidaymaker rather than a traveller. They travel to a youth hostel in Byron Bay and Will sings a cover of "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" to Katie, who seduces him at the hostel. Before they can have sex, Katie passes out, shortly before a backpacker enters and attacks Will for thinking that he is engaging in rape, setting off Will's own rape alarm in the process.

The next day, the boys join the backpackers at Splash Planet, a water park. Jay believes that his ex-girlfriend Jane works there. Neil accidentally kills a dolphin by feeding it fast food, and Simon is attacked by some fathers after they mistake him for a paedophile. A worker tells Jay that Jane has left Splash Planet and is working in the outback. As Will uses a waterslide, Neil soils himself due to IBS symptoms and his faeces follow Will down the slide. Will is hit in the face by the faeces, causing him to vomit uncontrollably and the pool to be evacuated.

Cast

Daisy Ridley originally featured in the opening scene but was unavailable for reshoots as she was busy filming Star Wars: The Force Awakens so was cut from the final version of the film.

Production

Origin

Although originally intended as an unambiguous ending to the television series, the unexpected popularity and box office success of The Inbetweeners Movie led to speculation over the possibility of a sequel. These rumours began in early September 2011, while the film was still in cinemas, and were denied by its writers and actors. Around the same time, producer Christopher Young openly recognised the possibility of another film based on the series, claiming that "if there is a sequel it will come from the creative elements ... We've talked about it. In the short term people are dispersing and doing other things but I'm sure in the medium term a sequel is very possible. It won't be immediate but it's definitely not closed." Co-writer Damon Beesley later admitted "we didn't know how successful it would be and that it would have a life on screen. But they did translate to big-screen characters, people did care about them and did go back and see it more than once – and that's very rare in cinema. The idea of not following that up seemed insane to most people". The actors had mixed emotions on making a sequel. Although Buckley and Thomas felt put off by the success of the first film, Harrison and Bird became convinced on reading the script.

Simon Bird, James Buckley, Blake Harrison and Joe Thomas co-produced the film with Spencer Millman but Damon Beesley and Iain Morris awarded a sole producer credit to Millman; Bird, Buckley, Harrison and Thomas are instead listed as uncredited producers in the film final cut.

Iain Morris received inspiration for the film from his own experiences as a high school exchange student on Australia's Gold Coast, describing it as "a place where people go to get drunk, pick some fruit and get drunk again".

Development

On 21 August 2012, it was announced that a sequel was in early stages of pre-production. On 8 November, it was announced by series creators Morris and Beesley that a script was being written and it was at "version 0.5"

On 2 August 2013, the sequel was officially confirmed for release in August 2014. The series' Facebook page revealed on 15 March 2014 that the sequel would be released on 6 August 2014.

On 9 May 2014, a teaser trailer was released, in which the characters drive through the Outback and call an Australian Aboriginal person a "fire wanker". A second trailer, this time full length, was released on The Inbetweeners official Facebook page on 18 June, showing more of the storyline.

Filming

Filming began in Australia on 7 December 2013, before moving to the UK in January 2014. Part of the film was shot in Marree, South Australia, an isolated Outback settlement without mobile reception or Internet.

Ben Palmer, the director of the first Inbetweeners film, was involved with Simon Pegg's film Man Up, so Morris and Beesley directed The Inbetweeners 2. Bird said that the actors were initially disheartened by the absence of Palmer, and nervous about the direction of Morris and Beesley due to their lack of experience in the position.

Morris had considered filming the Australian scenes in South Africa due to the comparatively high costs in Australia, which despite a higher budget caused the sequel to have fewer resources than its predecessor. While all locations for the first film had been within 10 minutes of the hotel, locations in the second were separated by a three-hour flight and nine-hour car journey. During filming in the Outback, the Australian crew provided two doctors and 40 litres of IV fluid, although the only point in which a doctor was called was when Buckley thought that he was having a heart attack, which was in reality indigestion from chips and lager. Beesley considered it "the maniac's choice of a film to be your first film". The water park scenes were filmed at Wet'n'Wild Gold Coast, which Thomas described as "some quite challenging scenes".

When asked whether he ever felt averse to any material in the film due to perceived offence, Morris said that the crew's attitude was "let’s shoot everything, push it, and then if it feels like too much when we’re watching it, we can always pull it back in the editing room".

Release

The film premiered at Leicester Square, London, on 5 August 2014. In Australia it was distributed by Roadshow Entertainment and released on 21 August. The same company took the film to New Zealand a week later.

Box office

The Inbetweeners 2 grossed £2.75 million on its opening day of 6 August 2014, surpassing its predecessor as the top grossing opening day in the UK for a comedy film. By the end of its first weekend, it topped the UK box office with a gross of £12.5 million, surpassing Transformers: Age of Extinction (£11.7 million) as the largest UK opening in 2014; this, however, was less than the £13.2 million opening of The Inbetweeners Movie in 2011. It topped the box office for a second week, in which it grossed £9.83 million. In its third week, it fell to second spot behind new release Lucy.

In its opening week in Australia, the film grossed $3.155 million in Australian dollars, topping the box office and pushing Guardians of the Galaxy into second place. It fell to second place in its second week, with Guardians of the Galaxy returning to top spot.

As of 12 October 2014, the film had made $55,652,783 in the United Kingdom, $6,598,273 in Australia, and $473,316 in New Zealand.

With an overall gross of £33.3 million, The Inbetweeners 2 was the highest grossing British or Irish film in the domestic market in 2014, ahead of Paddington (£27.9 million). It was the third highest grossing of any film in the UK and Ireland in 2014, after The Lego Movie and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.

Critical reception

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 69% based on 42 reviews - with an average critic rating of 5.9/10. The site's consensus reads: "The hapless Inbetweeners reunite for another raunchy adventure that will satisfy fans' appetite for laughs, but a downturn in plausibility along with an uptick in mean-spiritedness makes for less fun than their previous exploits." On Metacritic, the film has a 55/100 rating based on 7 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph gave the film four stars out of five, saying "Perhaps the biggest compliment you could pay the film, apart from that it's by and large hysterically funny, is that it is unmistakably film-like, with a smoothly arcing plot and gross-out moments staged with the verve and ceremony of an action-movie set-piece." In The Guardian, Mike McCahill gave the film three stars. He found fault in its treatment of female characters, saying "Some of the abundant thought channelled into knob gags could have been diverted towards developing the boys' female counterparts beyond harpies and lust objects". Unlike Collin, he found The Inbetweeners 2 to resemble a television show more than a film: "as with the first film, number 2 never quite shakes its resemblance to primetime E4, complete with ad-ready fadeouts and Walkabout interiors...couldn't the vehicles transporting them to the wider world display slightly more ambition?". Chris Hewitt of Empire magazine gave the film four stars out of five, summing it up as "The Fannytastic Four leave us on a poo-flecked, piss-soaked, sun-burned high that more than overcomes its familiar flaws to become a real contender for the year's funniest film. Four star wankers".

A negative review came from Graham Young of the Birmingham Mail, who found the film's humour to be repetitive: "Damon Beesley and Iain Morris have both directed this sequel which lacks an emotional arc to create momentum...Yes, it can be funny, and you’d have to be a prude not to laugh...But the endless, alliterative phrases for sex and countless in-your-face sight gags dilute the characters and turn the mood wearingly lewd. Like Nick Frost's The Cuban Fury [sic] earlier this year, The Inbetweeners 2 takes a funny premise – and then ruins it." Writing in The Observer, Jonathan Romney gave the film two stars out of five, summing it up as "British TV comedy's favourite Four Stooges take another holiday, resulting in fountainous poo, pee and puke, rampant misogyny, 'ironic' rampant misogyny, rampant 'irony', and that old Carry On staple, horror of sex (especially among the over-25s)". He however predicted that on the record of the first film, The Inbetweeners 2 would be a financial success. In Time Out, Tom Huddleston gave the film one star out of five, saying "‘The Inbetweeners 2’ is riddled with contempt: for its characters, for its audience and most notably for the entire female gender. That a film in 2014 can still get away with depicting all women as either dumb, hapless sluts or ball-busting harridans is frankly unbelievable."

Home media

The Inbetweeners 2 was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the United Kingdom on 1 December 2014. A DVD edition also including the first film was released at the same time.

The DVD featured two audio commentaries, one with Morris and Beesley and the other by the four lead actors, in addition to a behind-the-scenes featurette, deleted scenes, and a blooper reel. The film's release on home media was sponsored by STA Travel, who offered a prize of a holiday to the Australian state of Queensland.

Sequel

A second sequel, titled The Inbetweeners 3, was announced by Netflix on 7 September 2026, with production beginning in the UK on the same day. Series creators Damon Beesley and Iain Morris returned to write and direct the film, with original cast members Simon Bird, James Buckley, Blake Harrison, and Joe Thomas reprising their roles.

Legacy

At its premiere on 5 August 2014, Bird said of the film:

Once you see the film you'll see it feels like they've all moved on with their lives, so unfortunately this is it. It's a great way to say goodbye.

In an interview with the BBC, Thomas said that Morris and Beesley had been "very adamant" that the series had finished. On his co-stars, he added "There is a bond there that I think would be a stupid thing to waste. You don't get that bond very often with other performers and we do have it and it's a valuable thing".

In the same interview, when asked whether the series had finished, both co-creators answered with a simultaneous "Yes!". Morris expressed that "I think the time is right. After the first film, I wanted to hear more from Jay, Will, Neil and Simon. But this time I feel there is enough. There is more than enough Jay in this world", and Beesley added "The end of the story has always felt like the time where they go off and start living their adult life. And I think this film takes us up to that point".

Various media outlets blamed The Inbetweeners 2 for an increase in a craze of deliberate defecation in swimming pools to distress other guests. They linked the craze, known as "logging" or "Code Brown", to a scene akin to it in the film.