Let’s face it, thirtysomething male film critics are not the target demographic for the tweenie Britflick comedy Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging. For the world depicted therein is a place, half Clueless, half Byker Grove, where English children speak in American sitcom catchphrases – “That’s soooo beyond the Valley of Sad City!” says the film’s kooky 14-year-old heroine Georgia Nicolson (Georgia Groome) as her parents, ugh, kiss in front of her. It’s also a place where adolescence is drained of sexual danger, and where every life crisis can be resolved by an “infectious” musical montage. And yet the real question here is that if thirtysomething male film critics are not the target for Angus, Thongs etc, then who is?

The film, directed by Bend it Like Beckham’s Gurinder Chadha from the bestselling novels by Louise Rennison, has a craven need to please. It opens with a scene-setting montage of Georgia dashing around Eastbourne in a “stuffed olive” fancy dress costume, fleeing in comedy horror after an embarrassing faux pas at a party. The soundtrack blasts She’s So Lovely by the frothy popsters Scouting for Girls. If you’ve heard the song (sing “She’s so luv-eh-lee” a thousand times without taking breath), you’ll get a sense of the movie’s “infectious” tone.

More introductions follow, of Georgia’s equally kooky friends (skinny one, quiet one, Asian one), and of Georgia’s dramatic conflict – her beloved father Bob (Alan Davies, woefully miscast in Pop Walton mode) has been offered a job in New Zealand, while her new unrequited obsession, teen hunk Robbie (Aaron Johnson) is unaware of her existence. Thus Georgia must inevitably, and through a series of zany misadventures (fake tan overdose, big knickers fiasco, etc), snag Robbie and simultaneously save father Bob from a New Zealand exodus just in time for a gurning feel-good finale.

All this, of course, is GREAT FUN!!! As Chadha proved with Beckham, she has an eye for the comic absurdities of adolescent life. But whereas the latter movie was anchored in race and cultural tension, these teens are a protean bunch. Cheery, wholesome and sexually naive, they are the poster children for a safe studio-funded movie that hopes to repeat Beckham’s success and appeal to audiences around the globe. And that’s maybe the point. For the target of this boldly inoffensive movie is not someone, but everyone.

12A, 100 minutes

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