The Festival  ★½

WHAT a disappointment.

The Festival is directed by Iain Morris, one of the main writers of the hilarious television series The Inbetweeners, and stars Joe Thomas.

Unfortunately this 2018 English comedy is far from hilarious, perhaps one of the weakest comedies of the past year.

Rather than just directing the film, Iain Morris would have been better off retaining the writing duties as well.

Keith Akushie and Joe Parham are responsible for the television comedies Fresh Meat and Siblings, neither of which I’m familiar with.

Joe Thomas, who played the love-struck Simon in The Inbetweeners series and two films, tries his best but suffers from not having the same ensemble cast around him.

The supporting characters in The Festival not only don’t provide the balance required, they are just plain boring, the fault lying with the acting as well as the script..

Thomas plays Nick who has just been dumped by his girlfriend Caitlin (Hannah Tointon). His best mate Shane (Hammed Animashaun) talks him into joining him at a three-day music festival as a way of getting over the break-up.

The break-up by the way, just before graduation, leads to one of many ill-conceived sequences that are meant to come across as being humorous in their embarrassment factor, but in fact are just plain cringingly unfunny.

Anyway, Shane is determined to meet DJ Hammerhead, who wears a hammerhead shark mask and is performing at the festival. Yep, that’s meant to be funny as well.

On the train they meet Amy, an Australian who talks non-stop and is meant to be an endearing character but is actually flat-out annoying. They are travelling on child tickets and to avoid the ticket-collector they hide in the toilets and act like they are having a threesome. That’s meant to be funny too but is shockingly acted.

At the festival we also meet a bloke missing one leg, nicknamed ‘Pirate’ (hilarious), another bloke who mistakenly keeps calling Nick ‘Lick’, another one who keeps mistaking Nick for Harry Potter and a girl dressed as a smurf. These are meant to be running gags as well.

Oh and there’s a druid wedding that ends with a bloke having sex with a goat and a scene where Nick’s nipple ring (don’t ask) gets caught on a wire fence.

Don’t waste your time.