The Festival Review

Music festivals are a rite of passage for many in the UK and it serves as the setting for the British comedy The Festival.

Upon graduating from university Nick (Joe Thomas) falls into a deep depression after breaking up with his long-term girlfriend Caitlin (Hannah Tointon). To get Nick out of his funk his best friend Shane (Hammed Animashaun) convinces Nick to go to a festival, leading to them meeting a crazy Aussie, Amy (Claudia O’Doherty), run into Caitlin and her friends and try and meet the legendary DJ Hammerhead.

The Festival comes from some strong perigee behind it – Iain Morris, one half of the team who created The Inbetweeners directed it and the screenplay came from the duo who wrote BBC Three’s Siblings. And I would be lying if I said I didn’t laugh at the film – there were some witty line, visual gags like a fantasy sequence and a subversion of Pulp Fiction. My favorite involved one guy mixing up his drugs.

Anyone who has watched The Inbetweeners will be in familiar territory with The Festival – there are jokes involving urine, blood and semen and there is the usual brand of cringe humor and humiliation. Morris also adds bestiality, indecent exposure to children and more explicit drug use. Yet with other jokes the punchline was predictable, undercutting the humor.

The biggest problem in the film was the characters because they are so damn unlikable. I wanted there to be a big fire to kill the majority of the festival goers. Having unlikeable characters is nothing new for either Morris or Keith Akushie and Joe Parham, but they balance out their work with more developed characters. They worked on TV because audiences got to know them and why there had such flaws.

At times Nick could be empathetic, it was horrible of Caitlin to dump him the way she did and when he faced off against a load of rude festival-goers I wanted to scream at the screen. Yet for the most part Nick was just a whiny git – the film does acknowledge this but it doesn’t make it any better. He is selfish and self-centered, coming across like J.D. and Ted Mosby in Scrubs and How I Met Your Mother. Nick even turns into a stalker, falling in love with a girl he had a one night stand with. Nick is surrounded by despicable people and Morris seems to have a contemptible look on society.

The only two characters that were bearable were Shane and Amy. They were far from being the sharpest tools in the box but they are at least well-meaning and the worst to describe them is that they were a little annoying.

The screenplay is unfocused, the writers were unsure what they wanted to do. The first third was basically a recreation of The Inbetweeners Movie where one character is dumped by his girlfriend and goes on holiday to get over it. The Festival then turns into The Hangover where Nick and his pals try to find Smurf Girl (Emma Rigby) and find out that Nick did some regrettable actions when high. And finally The Festival became Kevin and Perry Go Large where Shane tries to meet DJ Hammerhead and play his music to his hero.

The Festival does have a decent cast – Morris rehired his Inbetweeners parting of Thomas and Tointon (AKA Simon and Katie) who did well-playing characters I wanted to avoid. Animashaun and O’Doherty were decent in their roles and Emma Rigby is always a welcome presence – she should fulfill some people’s Smurfette fantasies. Morris and his team also hired some big name actors in the form of Jermaine Clement, Noel Fielding and Nick Frost – although in Frost he just came on set for the day. Fielding’s character was meant to be based on Daft Punk but all I thought about was DJ Iron Monkey from an American Dad episode.

The Festival is basically a cross between The Inbetweeners and the 2012 film Project X and if you didn’t like either of those you will hate this film. There are some decent jokes amidst the mire that does at least elevate The Festival over Project X. Although The Festival got a theatrical release in the UK and Ireland it will most likely go straight-to-Netflix in most other countries.