  We consider here the effects of inertia on the instability of a flat liquid
film under the effects of capillary and intermolecular forces (van der Waals
interaction). Firstly, we perform the linear stability analysis within the long
wave approximation, which shows that the inclusion of inertia does not produce
new regions of instability other than the one previously known from the usual
lubrication case. The wavelength, $\lambda_m$, corresponding to he maximum
growth, $\omega_m$, and the critical (marginal) wavelength do not change at
all. The most affected feature of the instability under an increase of the
Laplace number is the noticeable decrease of the growth rates of the unstable
modes. In order to put in evidence the effects of the bidimensional aspects of
the flow (neglected in the long wave approximation), we also calculate the
dispersion relation of the instability from the linearized version of the
complete Navier-Stokes (N-S) equation. Unlike the long wave approximation, the
bidimensional model shows that $\lambda_m$ can vary significantly with inertia
when the aspect ratio of the film is not sufficiently small. We also perform
numerical simulations of the nonlinear N-S equations and analyze to which
extent the linear predictions can be applied depending on both the amount of
inertia involved and the aspect ratio of the film.
