People Just Do Nothing: Big In Japan review – the funniest British comedy in years

If you’re going to take a sitcom to the big screen, there are few more tried and tested ways to do so than by sending your characters far afield. The Simpsons hit the road for Alaska and The Inbetweeners jetted off to Malia, but none of them left their comfort zones quite like the Kurupt FM gang from acclaimed BBC comedy series People Just Do Nothing. After seven years spent barely venturing outside of Brentford, Big in Japan takes the pirate radio crew all the way to Tokyo, where culture shocks and the lure of fame threaten to tear them apart.

We’re reintroduced to the Kurupt gang three years after their final broadcast, with their lives taking mostly dull turns. Frontman MC Grindah/Tony (Allan Mustafa) is doing the rounds as a postman in Essex, while DJ Beats (Hugo Chegwin) works at a Megabowl and delusional “manager” Chabuddy G (Asim Chaudhury) is living in his van.

Their fortunes start to turn around when their best/only song “Heart Monitor Riddim” suddenly gets airplay in Japan, where it's used on a Total Wipeout-esque gameshow to signal a failure to complete the course. Suddenly the guys find themselves on a plane to Tokyo in a bid to finally make their fortune.

There’s quite a bit of set-up involved in actually getting the action going, and the first half is bit slow and over-reliant on stale “Japan is weird” material. But once everything’s in place, Big in Japan hits you with an absolute barrage of jokes and a brilliantly high hit rate. Through a series of contrivances mostly centred on Grindah being seduced and consumed by the fame monster in record time, the gang are broken up, allowing the film to essentially function as a supersized sketch show – a perfect choice which keeps the laughs coming instead of getting bogged down in plot.

This cast know these characters inside out, while returning director Jack Clough makes for familiar and steady hands behind the camera. Perhaps inevitably, it’s Chaudhury who gets the biggest laughs, as the woefully out-of-his-depth Chabuddy G clatters around Tokyo until he’s reduced to sleeping on the streets, though no one winds up feeling short-changed. There’s a hysterical fight between Grindah and Beats which ends in equally funny tears, while Lily Brazier gets great mileage out of the wilful obliviousness of Lady Miche, Grindah’s partner and overly enthusiastic groupie.

Big in Japan might expand the scale of Kurupt FM’s world, but its intentions never stray from its humble sitcom origins: to simply make you laugh. After a rocky start, this quickly becomes the funniest British film in years – at least since 2017’s Death of Stalin – and should appeal just as much to newcomers as long-time fans, with its fleet-footed character work and an adorably romantic ending that grants it a genuinely cinematic feel. It’s a perfect endpoint to the People Just Do Nothing journey, wrapping up the series on the sort of high that long-running comedies are rarely afforded.

People Just Do Nothing: Big in Japan is now showing in UK cinemas.