‘Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging’: how a cringey teen classic still resonates years later
“Oh flip flibbering flipping hell,” Georgia Nicolson exclaims near the start of Gurinder Chadha’s Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging. It’s one of many iconic phrases used by the characters throughout the film, which have stuck in the back of British women’s minds since it was released in 2008. From “What are you supposed to be, an obese leprechaun?” to “God, I’m having a nervy b,” the movie is packed full of quotable lines that have echoed throughout secondary school corridors for over 15 years, defining the vocabularies of friendship groups across Britain.
Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging remains a beloved British favourite, still remembered fondly by thousands of women who related to the characters growing up. The beauty of the film can be found in the fact that it fully embraced the awkward, cringe-inducing, and eyebrow-raising behaviour that many of us possessed as teenagers, such as analysing what “see you later” really means and finding any possible way to interact with a crush. The film wasn’t given a glossy Hollywood sheen; these were teenagers who looked and acted their ages, and they used hilarious phrases that made the quotable lines from Mean Girls feel soulless in comparison.
When Chadha came on board to direct the film, she wanted to make the British equivalent of American high-school movies like Mean Girls, something that had hardly been done before. Now, Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging is part of a very small group of British girly teen comedies, sitting alongside the likes of Wild Child and St Trinians. While these movies do contain quintessentially British and relatable characters, no film is quite as true to life as Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging.
The movie centres around Georgia, who lives in Eastbourne with her parents, little sister, Libby, and cat, Angus. She is part of the Ace Gang, which contains Jas, Rosie, and Ellen, who, like many teenage girls, are simultaneously boy-crazy and completely unacquainted with the male species. As Georgia tries to convince her parents to let her have her 15th birthday party in a club, she deals with family issues, friendship disasters, the pressures of girlhood, and a huge crush on the new boy at school – Robbie.
From the beginning, the movie highlights the struggles of hitting the early years of adolescence and suddenly having to keep up with everyone else. At the start of the film, Georgia arrives at a house party dressed as a papier mache stuffed olive, only to discover that her friends have not stuck to the plan to dress as “hors d’oeuvres to be original.” She is hit by an earth-shattering realisation from Jas: “Boys don’t like girls for funniness.”
Georgia reckons with the pressures of growing up as a girl, which she often fails spectacularly at (“I’m such a sad excuse for a girl” she bemoans in one scene). This is exemplified by her accidentally shaving off one eyebrow, turning her legs bright orange, and being caught wearing massive knickers. With the arrival of Robbie, she feels the pressures of looking perfect more than ever, and as Jas finds herself in a relationship, Georgia must adapt to these feelings of inadequacy, loneliness, and insecurity.
The movie truly allowed countless female viewers to feel understood and represented on screen – we’ve all gone a little heavy-handed with tweezers or worn a horrendously bad outfit in the quest to fit in at some point. It illuminated just how hard it can be to deal with bitter friend fallouts or whether you’re ‘pretty enough’ – issues that the film takes seriously alongside its many humorous moments. Ask any woman whose adolescence started in the late 2000s or early 2010s if they resonated with the characters and themes explored in Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging, and it’s rare you’ll find someone who didn’t relate to something.
Everything about Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging feels like a time capsule of a period that no longer exists—when the internet and mobile phones weren’t a big part of day-to-day life, wearing striped pink tights, blue plimsolls, and a purple hoodie was a good look, and a soundtrack that ranged from Razorlight to Dizzee Rascal somehow worked. At the same time, the issues explored within the film will surely resonate with young girls today.
While there are many cringe-inducing moments, like when Dave the Laugh calls breasts “nunga nungas,” how can you not enjoy the stone-cold delivery of Lindsey’s “Listen, short arse, keep away from my man. He’s not a cradle-snatcher, and you’re not woman enough for him. So back off”? As the movie ends, Robbie chooses Georgia, the “perfect nutter”. The film sends the message that being yourself, without feeling the need to make cosmetic changes, is the most important thing you can do; a vital message for viewers to hear – even if it is delivered in an overwhelmingly cheesy yet heartwarming way.
So, years later, why are women so often revisiting Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging? Not only is it actually hilarious (and self-aware of its cringe factor), but it truly feels like stepping back in time to the days of walking home from school with your best friends, eating a takeaway, falling for a boy in the year above, and spending too long applying sparkly eye-shadow and too much lip gloss. While we weren’t all as successful in love as Georgia ended up being, the film emphasised that above everything, it’s your friendships that get you through it all.
Chadha truly understood the experience of being a teenage girl. One moment, you feel everything so deeply; the next, you’re making up dance routines with your mates. Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging might not be 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it is truly a film you won’t ever forget.
