Every now and then the only thing you can do is let your guard down and go with the flow.
After the unending, unspeakable ugliness of the nightly news, I have to confess (a little shamefacedly) that I had tears of laughter streaming down my face during this gross-out movie’s fantastic poo scene.
It was cathartic, which is the last thing I expected to be writing about what is basically a tsunami of crudity. Will, Jay, Neil and Simon (Simon Bird, James Buckley, Blake Harrison and Joe Thomas) are back and looking rather too old to be continuing on as the teenage prats whom we first encountered on holiday in Crete in in 2011.
But the group’s history of collaboration, beginning with the British TV series (2008–10), has made of them an accomplished comedic unit.
The story is set in Oz, where Jay has been spending part of his gap year and letting on to his mates that he is shagging himself silly. The others fly out to join him and the truth is exposed – Jay is working in a toilet and living in a tent pitched on the front lawn of his Australian uncle’s suburban quarter-acre (David Field, in blokey overdrive).
Fired by romantic ambitions, Will follows the beautiful Katie (Emily Berrington) to Byron Bay and the gang all check into the Arts Factory.
Katie, however, is also being courted by the muscular, dreadlocked Ben (Freddie Stroma), and it is Will’s clashes with Ben that introduce at least a modicum of clever and biting satire to proceedings – at one point they are involved in a drumming/healing session inside a tent that takes a delicious bite out of the Bay’s ‘spiritual’ mumbo-jumbo.
The narrative tends to fizzle out when they head to Birdsville (the whole is little more than a series of gag set-ups), but the boys are such hopeless nongs that it is impossible not to become swept along in their follies.
An offensive film of no redeeming qualities and rarely rising above groin-level – I loved it.
~ John Campbell
