The newest edition to the road trip film genre is funny, heartfelt, and absolutely worth the journey to see it.
An underrated trope of American cinema is the road trip. Put together a group of personality-mismatched friends, set them on a path to a far-off destination, and watch as complications rip apart and rebuild their long-established relationships.
Joy Ride takes that well-worn device and tweaks it in rewarding ways. Instead of traversing the U.S. (most common) or Europe, the Adele Lim-directed (who has a story by credit) and Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao-written film unfolds mainly in China. With the new location and the predominantly Asian American cast comes different concerns and different twists on familiar situations. Like Polite Society earlier this year, the film doesn’t shy away from bringing cultural specificity to a standard plot trope. Nonetheless, it still feels universal and becomes a more interesting film to boot.
Mapping The Route
Audrey (Ashley Park) and Lolo (Sherry Cola) grew up as best friends as one of the few (if only two) Chinese kids their age in their predominantly white suburb. Audrey, the adopted daughter of white parents Joe (David Denman) and Mary (Annie Mumolo) Sullivan, has overachieved her entire life. Lolo, on the other hand, has always marched to her own drum, using her parents’ (Debbie Fan and Chris Pang) restaurant to display her (not especially) subliminal erotic art.
At the film’s start, Audrey is preparing to visit China for the first time since infancy. She’s going to land an agreement with international businessman Chao (Ronny Chieng, doing a lot with a small part) and bringing Lolo as a translator. Lolo, in turn, lets her cousin Deadeye (Sabrina Wu) tag along for the ride. In China, the rendezvous with Audrey’s college roommate and Lolo’s rival for the title of best friend, Kat (Stephanie Hsu). Formerly a sexually adventurous woman, Kat has remade herself as a waiting-for-marriage Christian and star of China’s biggest soap opera.
Together the quartet head on an old-fashioned road trip through China (and beyond) to find Audrey’s pre-adoption history, seemingly the only thing that will help her seal the deal with Chao for her company.
In the Front Seat
Park and Cola acquit themselves well as the polar opposite best friends. Cola makes Lolo affable and kind in a way the “irresponsible” friend often isn’t, making her differing viewpoints understandable. More importantly, it never tips the scales too strongly to Park by keeping Lolo from being the “annoying one.”
Park’s role is both easier—she’s our main protagonist, so we’re inclined to like her—and harder—she’s the one often left holding the “I’m going to monologue at length” bag. Still, she sells the speeches, including one about the pain of never belonging anywhere and no one letting her forget it. Plus, she’s solid when allowed to be funny, especially regarding a newly discovered enthusiasm for cocaine.
The Backseat Drivers
At the risk of shortchanging our main characters, the other two members of the quartet steal the show. As the “perfect” best friend, Hsu is excellent. You get why Audrey would love her and Lolo would hate her in equal measure. Additionally, how she plays horny—for lack of a better way to put it—is wonderfully silly but not without a sense of reality. She’s genuinely in love with Clarence (Desmond Chiam), but being with him forces her to suppress an essential aspect of herself, perhaps forever.
That brings us to Wu’s Deadeye, my favorite of the foursome. Goofy, emotionally vulnerable, and just a bit unusual, she’s the film’s honest heart. Whether it is her dance battling basketball players in a hotel or unapologetically taking her cousin for every cent he has in a card game she’s making up as she goes, she lands every joke. More importantly, she sells the emotions her three friends are too socially adept and guarded to articulate. Her vision of where she’ll be left at the end of the trip is especially heartbreaking in a very down to Earth way.
Humor Fit for The Journey
Like any women-driven ensemble comedy of the past 20 years, Joy Ride is sure to spark a plethora of “hey, people like seeing funny women, who knew?” articles in its wake. What it’s unlikely to do is get dinged for gross-out humor that doesn’t feel organic to the character, a fate films like Bridesmaids have faced. That isn’t to say there aren’t moments of vomiting, jokes about anuses, or injurious incidents of sexual activity. However, they all serve the story and feel accurate and honest to the characters. There’s nothing here like Bridesmaids’ dress-fitting food poisoning scene, which felt at odds with the rest of the film and later revealed to be an addition by outside hands.
The Road is Where The Heart Is
Nothing can ruin a comedy quicker than drowning it in sentimentality. On the other hand, without some heart, a film can feel disposable. Joy Ride threads the needle, mixing in the right amount of emotion, and at the right times, without making the whole thing feel syrupy. Park’s angry blowup and a tear-jerking late scene with an uncredited but recognizable actor work as well as they do because the film gives them the right amount of space and emotional valence to land.
Joy Ride doesn’t rewrite the comedy or road trip game, but it delivers a funny film that’s smart about emotions and culturally specific enough to feel authentic. Like the quartet, commit to traversing any amount of miles (well, within reason) to catch it in theatres.
Joy Ride hands over its train tickets in theatres everywhere on July 7.
Rating: 8/10 SPECS
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Tim Steven is a sad tomato, Tim Stevens is three miles of bad road. He’s also a therapist, staff writer and social media manager for The Spool, and a freelance writer with publications like ComicsVerse, Marvel.com, CC Magazine, and The New Paris Press. His work has been quoted in Psychology Today, The Atlantic, and MSN Ireland. Feel free to find him @UnGajje on Twitter or in a realm of pure imagination.