MAN UP

MAN UP is an adorable, funny, moving, smart romantic comedy starring Simon Pegg and Lake Bell, with an impeccable British accent. The required goofy set-up is that Jack (Pegg) mistakes Nancy (Bell) for his blind date, and because she has been hectored by her sister to man up and "put herself out there",  she runs with it.  The date goes surprisingly well, taking in a pop up bar, a cantina and a bowling alley, until Nancy's high school stalker Sean (Rory Kinnear) turns up and reveals the truth. At this point we need another improbable twist to keep the date going into Act Two - the couple need to return to an earlier bar to pick up some lost property and they happen to run into Jack's ex.  Cue our couple pretending to be an actual couple and a genuine moment of emotional connection in, rather improbably, a toilet.  We then roll into a third act that understands the cliches of the romantic comedy genre and satisfies them with authentic emotion, while also winking at the audience. A clever trick to pull off.

That the movie works is down to a well-written script that deals honestly with dating in one's thirties, and the genuine likability of, and chemistry between, the lead actors.  I've long thought Lake Bell a hidden gem of Hollywood - her IN A WORLD... was one of the best films of 2013.  The added bonus is Rory Kinnear as the creepy friend Sean. He's genuinely laugh-out-loud funny and his character adds a bit of spikiness to what would other be just a gently funny, sweet film. 

MAN UP has a running time of 88 minutes and is rated 15 for strong language and sex references.   MAN UP played Tribeca 2015 and is currently on release in the UK, Ireland and Lithuania. It will be released in the Netherlands and Singapore on June 4th, in New Zealand on June 18th and in Germany on July 30th.

THE INBETWEENERS MOVIE - Pure Comedy Gold.

This girl's so wet for me I can hear the waves breaking in her fanny 

Five years ago, the British teen TV channel, E4, broadcast two new shows.  "Skins" was designed to shock the bourgeoisie with its tales of teen promiscuity and drug-taking.  The cast was full of pretty young things playing privileged teens in affluent Bristol.  By contrast, "The Inbetweeners" was about the  normal boring suburban kids who live in housing estates in middle England. Kids with parents who smother them rather than ignore them - kids who struggle to get laid, argue over petrol money, and get wasted on two pints of lager.  Kids who have shit cars, and girlfriends who dump them, and spend their time farting and having a wank. 

"The Inbetweeners" was as much about modern life as "Skins" - with all the usual references to video games, text messaging, and interpreting the use of the "smiley face".  But, for all that, "The Inbetweeners" was basically just an old-fashioned coming-of-age comedy, with four likeable protagonists worrying about the stuff we all worried about at that age, no matter which decade we grew up in.  The basic premise therefore had broad appeal, hitting a wider demographic than "Skins".  It showed us who we really were rather than who we wished we could've been. And the cherry on the cake was the razor-sharp, bitingly funny dialogue from writers Damon Beesley and Iain Morris (the guys behind "Peep Show"). Not to mention the young cast's fearless attitude toward humiliating themselves in public.  To give you some examples....Posh geek Will Mackenzie (Simon Bird) is seen shitting himself in his AS exam; lanky dullard Neil Sutherland (Blake Harrison) is seen cutting his nob while pissing into a beer can in the back of a car; earnest but dim Simon Cooper (Joe Thomas) is seen modelling a speedo with a testacle sticking out of it; and Jay Cartwright (James Buckley) talks almost exclusively about "clunge" while completely failing to get any. 

The genius of the team behind "The Inbetweeners" was to kill off the TV show when it was still brilliant and not to invent some piss-poor reason to spin it out.  The kids had done their three terms in the sixth form over three short series, and that was the end of it. And this new movie looks less like the typical shameless Hollywood cash-in (you'll have to wait for the MTV produced version for that) than a credible and plausible way to continue the kids' story into the summer holiday after the school year has ended.  By letting the four teens go to Greece on a cheap package holiday the writers get new targets for their humour -  budget flights, dodgy accommodation, sleazy holiday reps, club-night entrance scams, and holiday romance - as well as letting the cast do what comes naturally - that is, drinking, vomiting, shitting, stripping off at inopportune moments, and somehow, by some miracle, actually finding girls that'll give them the time of day.  

I laughed out loud all the way through the flick, loved the in-references to events in the TV series (Will inadvertently pissing off the disabled - but especially the cameo of Mr Gilbert, my favourite character from the TV series, over the end credits). And while I can't really judge, I'm guessing that the characters are clearly enough established within the world of the movie that even a person who hadn't watched the TV series would find it as funny.  If I'm honest, Ben Wheeler's DV photography doesn't really need to be seen on a big screen, but this is in no way a glorified TV movie.  There are few greater feelings in life than to be in a crowded cinema with a bunch of people sharing in the same humour. Proper R-rated humour that isn't about trying oh-so-hard to be subversive and fails (HORRIBLE BOSSES, I'm looking at you) but that stems from the reality of the moment and the authenticity of how kids speak.  Seeing the lads dance over to some unsuspecting "clunge" on their first night in Greece is worth the price of the ticket alone! 

THE INBETWEENERS MOVIE is on release in the UK and Ireland. It opens in Australia on October 20th and in Spain in January 2012. The Inbetweeners TV show is available on DVD and on iTunes.   MTV is currently producing a US version.