Georgia Nicolson (Georgia Groome) is 14 going on incessantly about snogging in this 2008 adaptation of the UK’s 127th favourite book.

I know I’m not the target audience for this Film but I struggle to see how anyone could warm to Georgia, at least as she is presented in the movie. There isn’t really any story, just Georgia and her friends being obnoxious and selfish without repercussion for 100 merciless minutes. When they’re not stalking boys and falling out over boys, they’re slut-shaming and publicly humiliating their classmates, particularly the girl they hilariously call “Slaggy” Lindsay (Kimberley Nixon).

Aspects of this shallowness may be true to teenage life, but they are equally fixated on what pants other women are wearing and the contents of their bras. Even if people like this do exist, they do not make pleasant company. Nor do they learn to be kinder at any point, neglecting the character arc of the most basic teen movies.

Rather than have Georgia realise the error of her ways, the film folds to fit her nasty little narrative. In the end (spoilers for 2008) the movie rewards her brattish behaviour and punishes Slaggy Lindsay for no reason other than that’s what Georgia wanted to happen. Her parents throw her the party she wanted, she gets the boy (Aaron Johnson), and then goes round offering her single friends to various boys she has been unpleasant to like some patronising prepubescent pimp.

Even without its validation of selfishness, Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging is generally shoddy. To call it televisual would be an insult not only to Alan Davies (who plays Georgia’s dad) but TV in general, given the comparative beauty of the conceptually similar Derry Girls. And where Derry Girls and Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret? were able to capture their time periods with such affection, Gurinder Chadha has the unfortunate challenge of setting a British film in 2008, when Scouting for Girls and The Ting Tings were elected to soundtrack our financial ruin.

Incidentally whoever was in charge of scouting for the girls in this film does a less-than-perfect job, though admittedly most actors would struggle with the teenagers’ inexplicable pensioner vocabulary, their favourite words being “knickers” and “bazoomas”. Not even the cats who play Angus, the title character and therefore the stars of the movie, are allowed to escape with dignity.