FestivalMovie

The Festival Detailed Movie Rating

Nick (Joe Thomas) is dumped on the day of his university graduation. To cheer him up, his friend Shane (Hammed Animashaun) takes him to a music festival, where mud, debauchery and hijinks ensue. Problem is, his ex (Hannah Tointon) is at the festival too.

Alarm bells ring early in The Festival. Fmovies It seems to take an age to reach the shindig of the title and the boy-gets-dumped set-up is rote even by Britcom standards. Then, when we finally do arrive on site, we’re treated to a succession of awkward scenes of people standing around in bars that bear about as much resemblance to a real festival as Womad does to Creamfields. In real life, festivals are a mixture of Lord Of The Flies, The Lost Weekend and a bomb in Super Hans’ medical bag: the gathering here feels more like a workshopping weekend for middle managers. At least at first.

The heart sinks: is this last hurrah for much of the team behind the various incarnations of The Inbetweeners as damp a squib as Kanye at Glastonbury?

Delivers a satisfying and surprising amount of belly laughs.

Give in to that feeling, and you’ll be making a mistake. Like a dodgy pill bought off someone who looks like he took a wrong turn on the Fury Road, The Festival just needs a little while to kick in. Once it does, at almost exactly the half-way mark, things improve heartily, the sudden increase in location filming (at Leeds last year) scrubbing off the televisual feel of what came before.

The getting-over-the-girl plotline would’ve been familiar to Tutankhamun (and the notion that possession of various women is key to the hero’s self-esteem is, let’s say, old-fashioned), but the one-liners come fast and solid, Claudia O’Doherty is great fun as an Aussie space cadet, and the near-farce of the final half-hour delivers just enough absurdity for it to feel almost true-to-life.

Director Iain Morris and writers Keith Akushie and Joe Parham have had hands in some of the recent high water-marks of British TV comedy, and the experience shows: one of the virtues of the second half is how many pay-offs you don’t see coming, delivering a satisfying and surprising amount of belly laughs for something that initially veers dangerously into The Inbetweeners 2 territory. What younger audiences will make of riffs on Pulp Fiction, Happiness and even The Wicker Man is a mystery, however.

It can’t quite capture the day-three madness of a true festival experience, but something that truly nailed that feeling would challenge Jodorowsky himself. Instead, think of this as one of those one-day jobs in Hyde Park: sanitised fun, but fun nonetheless, and a decent gateway to get the kids into the harder stuff.