Road Trip

Hello, everyone. My name is Ed and I like parantheses.

How do you rate a comedy? The raison d'etre is to make you laugh, but it helps to have a plot as well. The reason why I always defend the Naked Gun films from Andy's insults is that they have a plot (or the first two did anyway) that keeps you interested amidst the silly jokes. I tend to get bored in full-length comedy films no plot, as there's only so much laughing you can do.

Road Trip sums up the freedom that American teenagers have: they can learn to drive early, keep a car with cheap petrol and fewer taxes than here, and spend the long Summer holidays with their friends driving around and looking for fun. The main character, Josh, is in a long-distance relationship with Tiffany, who he struggles to get in touch with. This part of the film seemed dated now that there are so many ways of getting in touch. It is eventually revealed that there was a sound reason why Tiffany had not been in touch, but all you had were land-lines in those days. To show how much he loves Tiffany, Josh simultaneously sends her a video of himself angsting over her (since that's the sort of thing women like, of course) and cheats on her with Beth (which Beth decides to record to give her some entertainment during those lonely, lonely nights). It turns out that Josh accidentally sent the wrong video to Tiffany, so he decides to drive off to recover it. I'm sure that we can all relate to times when we've sent an embarrassing message too soon or sent a message/package to the wrong address. These sort of cock-ups can be very funny in real life, so the outcome can only be a win: if he retrieves the tape, our hero has triumphed; if he fails, we laugh at the mishap.

Josh is joined in the trip by three others: Kyle, Ruben and EL. Kyle has some Freudian issues with his dominant father who has crushed his spirit. The idea is that he is liberated by the Jack the Lads he is tagging along with. Although he destroys his parents' car and wastes all their money on alcohol, we cannot resist but cheer him on when he rebukes his dad, who has just travelled half-way across America looking for his son. Not a great message for kids, but we've all wanted to do it! Another morally dubious moment comes when, after blowing up the car, they steal a bus from a blind woman. Oh well.........

Josh is about to fail in philosophy - a subject that I recall Will Smith also had trouble with during his Fresh Prince years. When the car is blown up, he loses all his books and has an uphill struggle to pass any sort of exam. He rings the professor to explain, and somehow gets fooled into thinking that a 17-year-old White student (Jake) is really a 40-year-old Black professor. This part was beyond the realm of plausibility but, you know, comedies have stupid characters in them. Jake wanted to sabotage Josh so that he could remove all opposition to getting Beth into bed. Later on, he tells Beth about this, which was not a very bright move.

Beth and Tiffany both seem to be very forgiving. I think that scenes where a young boy and girl embrace each other despite their huge faults (as in the more recent Adventureland) appeal to our memories of our first teenage loves, back in the days when everything was simple and you were too young to worry about whether your partner has any character flaws. At the end, Beth saves Josh by getting the exam called off, which makes you realise that she was much better than Tiffany all along.

There is also a thread that involves Tom Green's character (great name of Barry Mannilow) who tries to feed mice to snakes. Those who consider this to be sadistic will feel very satisfied when the snake swallows his hand. This was the funniest scene in the film for me: it interrupted a discussion in which Beth found out how Josh's hopes in life had been ruined by not attending a philosophy exam. There I was thinking that this is the scene where the heroine springs into action and saves the day, and instead we see a man waving a snake around the room.

I think it was a good idea to have a few background threads to give us a break now and then from the road trip. It allows for a long cast of characters, who are all either very likeable or very dislikeable. This reminds you of your school days when you knew loads of people, some of whom you appreciated and some you didn't have much time for.

This gets 3 stars. It made me laugh and kept me reasonably entertained. It gets marked down because the jokes are mostly corney and there are no clever jokes that would earn a comedy a 5*. The plot is detailed enough to keep you interested in the outcome, but it has a lot of implausible twists, which causes it to lose respect. Not all the acting is great: for example, the role of Kyle's father could've been done a lot more convincingly; I didn't hate the father in the way that the audience is supposed to.