Road Trip
***
Rated on a 4-star
scale
Screening venue: Odeon (Liverpool City Centre)
Released in the UK by UIP on October 13, 2000; certificate 15; 93 minutes;
country of origin USA; aspect ratio 1.85:1
Directed by Todd Phillips; produced by
Daniel Doldberg, Joe Medjuck. Written by Scot Armstrong,
Todd Phillips. Photographed by Mark Irwin; edited by Sheldon
Kahn.
CAST.....
Tom Green..... Barry
Brecklin Meyer..... Josh Porter
Seann William Scott..... E.L.
Amy Smart..... Beth
Paulo Constanzo..... Rubin
DJ Qualls..... Kyle Edwards
Rachel Blanchard..... Tiffany Henderson
Anthony Rapp..... Jacob
Fred Ward..... Earl Edwards
Okay, here's the drill. Josh (Brecklin Meyer)
is a student at Ithaca University. He cheats on his long-distance girlfriend,
the act gets videotaped, and somehow the tape gets mailed to the girlfriend.
She's staying at her grandmother's house for the week, so he has three days
to get to Texas by car and intercept the mail. Road trip!
Ah, the college movie, with its dirty gags and
motley crews. Josh is a pretty nice guy, except for this recent
indiscretion… also along for the ride are a skinny geek (DJ Qualls),
an intellectual pothead (Paul Constanzo), and a malevolent party animal (Seann
William Scott). Over the course of the picture they will crash their car,
get into credit card debt, cause waiters to spit on their breakfasts, witness
an old man on Viagra knock over ornaments with his erection and pretend they
are members of an all-black fraternity even though they're white. There's
also a scene in a sperm bank where we think we're gonna get predictable jokes,
and we get something I can hardly believe is physically possible, which you'll
only be expecting if you're a very sick-minded medical student. I'm not giving
it away. See it for yourself.
I've been procrastinating over this review for
a while. I don't really know what to say. It's easy to talk about lightweight
comedy when it doesn't work, but when it does, it's hard to analyse after
just one viewing. From my above vague description of the plot and gags, you'll
know if you're gonna hate this flick; if you're at all intrigued, you'll
probably like it. "Road Trip" doesn't have the mean streak
of "American Pie", last year's gross-out hit that I didn't particularly care
for, but it does have the same kind of cheerfully bad taste.
The key to "Road Trip" is its framing device.
The narrator is a slack-jawed moron named Barry (Tom Green) who's pushing
thirty but still hasn't graduated, is fascinated by such wonderful pursuits
as fitting a mouse in his mouth, and gets lost when showing visitors around
the university. He tells the story in great detail, even though he wasn't
present for any of its events, and he embellishes things so much that when
a listener stops him on a point of credibility, he simply replies "Hey! This
is my story!" It's probably all a figment of his imagination, which gives
the film freedom to be implausible, nonsensical, scattershot and stupid.
Forget about continuity, just sit back and giggle.
COPYRIGHT© 2000 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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