The Festival

The Festival opens with a clumsy sex scene that climaxes (fnarr) with bodily fluids spraying across a room. The man donating these fluids is Joe Thomas, best known for his role of the silly but sincere Simon in The Inbetweeners. You'll feel a desperate sense of deja vu watching this scene. Is The Festival going to be The Inbetweeners in a field? Gladly not but it gets close at times.

Nick has been seeing Caitlin all through college. Graduation day is here and they break up in the most painfully public fashion possible. To shake him out of his fugue, his best friend and aspiring DJ Shane drags him to a music festival in the middle of the English countryside. Along the way they meet the wacky Australian festival veteran Amy and her and Shane try to cheer Nick up but a run in with old college friends threatens to derail the weekend before it has even started.

I didn't hold out high hopes for this and the opening 30 minutes and the intense cringe contained within had me fearing the worst. But slowly it builds into something entertaining courtesy of two very likable performances from Hammed Animashaun & Claudia O’Doherty as Shane and Amy, some pretty cool location filming done during the actual Leeds festival, a load of ecstasy and ketamine, a very funny cameo from Noel Fielding as a DJ with a certain health issue and a narcotic montage scored by a song that's desperately over exposed but still works. It's messy, silly and predictable but it's fun and it will make you laugh. Mostly.

When it works it really works. The chemistry between Shane and Amy is lovely, the moment one main character decides to cut loose with an 80's cartoon character, a Pulp Fiction homage that comes from nowhere, the ridiculously joyful climax, a drug mix up that results in a very lost weekend for one reveller, a running joke about a forgettable face, all proper belly laugh moments but sadly tempered by a need to wedge in both face clawingly cringy moments and crude sexual scenes designed to give the film notoriety. It's actually quite a sweet film and despite the bestiality (yup), flying semen and urination it has a few good points to make about getting on with your life and accepting yourself. Oh and kudos for a joke about blokes pretending to be feminist just to get the ride.

As a lead, Joe Thomas really needs to shake things up though. He can't keep playing the same wet blanket character forever. It was a joke that felt creaky when he starred in Fresh Meat and it's just decrepit now. Claudia O'Doherty does well in part that's underwritten but her sheer exuberance makes it work. Sadly Jermaine Clement who was prominent in the trailers is absolutely wasted, to the point where you wonder did he play a larger part in an earlier version of the film. Hammed Animashaun saves the day as Shaun though, an immensely likable bear of a chap. With him in the lead the film would have been joyous. His character is a fine example of how to make a comedy work. If you care about the people onscreen you'll laugh along with them even more. 

It's a grand watch. A nice way to fill 90 minutes. It's actually quite like a real festival in that you'll enjoy more if you see it with a big crowd. And that you have to put up with a bit of shit to get to the good stuff.