York | Archive | 2001 | May | 18
From the Evening Press, first published Friday 18th May 2001.
Inbetweeners fancies itself as "the first film about the British University experience". Presumably that is supposed to buy it credibility but alas confirms what a naïve, milk-tooth piece of film-making it is: a student work indeed, as over-excited as freshers about sex, drugs, lesbianism and nudity.
Inbetweeners is almost entirely the creation of one Darren Paul Fisher, the 28-year-old founder of the Britpack Film Company, who is the first-time director, producer and writer behind a Britfilm with a budget of only £30,000.
Fisher's biggest achievement would appear to be gaining a release for what is essentially a home video, filmed on digital video with actors who look like audition rejects for Popstars' Hear'Say.
The film itself draws inspiration from two contrary sources: firstly, the nouvelle cuisine of cinema, the Dogme 95-patented trend for hand-held camera gymnastics, where focus is a bonus; secondly, that old student favourite, the graffiti with the philosophical pretensions on college loo walls. Example: "There's one question I've always wondered: who does God believe in?" At 19, you might think that's awfully profound, but we all grow out of it!
Fisher sets his student studies in a hall of residence at the University of Great Britain, as if he were presenting a generic guide to all our red-brick places or learning and yearning, and so inevitably it is stuffed with stereotypes and clichés, none of them as sharply nailed as in The Young Ones.
Fisher's version of education is that everyone starts with three silence-breaking questions involving their A-levels, their home and their course, and then matters proceed with undue haste to sexual discovery, obsession with breast size, drug experimentation and all manner of ways to avoid studies.
He aspires to be cynical, non-conformist and cheeky, but no observational comedy can succeed by observing only the obvious, and Fisher's knowing, gnawing tone is strangely conservative, while his use of an incessant but muffled soundtrack is as irritating as a wasp trying to escape through a closed window and his camerawork is monotonous. To save his awkward, uncomfortable cast further embarrassment, I shall not name any of them.
Inbetweeners is yet another Britflop. Time to do some homework, young Fisher.
© Newsquest Media Group 2008