too much of an inside joke

[navi tasan]

1) That is too much of an inside joke.
2) That joke is too inside.
3) That is too much of an inside joke.

Which are correct?
Which are idiomatic?

I am sure '1' is correct. I just put it there so it would become clear what the other two were supposed to mean.

 

[Skrej]

#1 and #3 are the exact same wording. #2 is meaningless.

 

[navi tasan]

Thank you very much, Skrej, and my apologies,

I made a mistake while typing '3'

It was supposed to be:

3) That joke is too much inside.

 

[emsr2d2]

That's wrong. You need to keep "inside joke" together. It's a set phrase.

 

[navi tasan]

Thank you very much, emsr2d2,

How about

4) That is too much an inside joke.
?

 

[jutfrank]

That is too much an inside joke.

That's grammatical but it's better with 'of'.

The problem is it's hard to make sense of what the sentence means. The too much modifier suggests 'degree'. In what way can 'inside-jokeness' be measured by 'degree'? And why? That's an unusual way of thinking so I don't think it would make much sense to a lot of people.