In a sentenceAn hour of extremely rude women, then twenty minutes of speeches to assure you they meant well
Four friends, one trip, no luck, says the poster, and that is the shape of it. Audrey (Ashley Park), her friend Lolo (Sherry Cola), Deadeye (Sabrina Wu) and Kat (Stephanie Hsu) travel across China together, and the trip goes wrong in most of the ways a trip can. Along the road there are drugs, other people’s beds, a great deal of nudity and a series of conversations about which of them belongs where and to whom. Ronny Chieng plays Chao, a man the four of them need on their side. Lori Tan Chinn plays Nai Nai Chen, who takes one look at the visitors and says exactly what she thinks of them. It runs 94 minutes and carries a 15 certificate.
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Adele Lim’s first film is a rude, fast, well-cast road comedy that earns its biggest laughs in a train carriage and loses its nerve in the last twenty minutes. Come for Sherry Cola and Sabrina Wu; forgive the speeches.
Adele Lim, who co-wrote Crazy Rich Asians (2018), directs for the first time and borrows the shape of The Hangover and Bridesmaids to do it: four friends, one trip, a bag of drugs, a deadline, a falling-out and a making-up. The difference is that the four are Asian American women and the trip is to China, where the question of who belongs where turns out to be the plot. Joy Ride is two films in one. The filthy one is the best thing here. The earnest one is fine, and it keeps switching the filthy one off.
The cast is the reason to go. Ashley Park plays Audrey as a woman who has spent her life being the acceptable one, and she lets the effort of it show in her jaw. Sherry Cola’s Lolo is loud, broke and loyal, and the script gives the two of them a friendship with real grievances in it rather than a montage. Stephanie Hsu, as Kat, runs two faces at once, a public one and a private one, and the film gets a lot of mileage from the moments the wrong face slips out. Sabrina Wu, as Deadeye, gets the biggest laughs from the fewest words; a flat stare and a remark about K-pop do more than most of the shouting. Ronny Chieng plays Chao with a smile that never quite decides whether it is friendly.
Then there is the train. Somebody’s drugs have ended up in the luggage, an inspection is coming, and the four of them have a few minutes to decide where the drugs go. We laughed until it hurt, then looked at each other and laughed again, mostly at ourselves. Nena Erb cuts the set pieces in short hard bursts, so no joke sits long enough to be inspected, and the speed is the film’s chief virtue: 94 minutes and none of them idle. Paul Yee shoots it bright and flat, the way studio comedies are shot so that the faces can be read, and gives the Chinese cities more colour than the American suburb. Michael N. Wong’s interiors do the shorthand a comedy needs; you know within a second of a new room who lives there and how much money they have, from a business hotel to the flat of Nai Nai Chen (Lori Tan Chinn), who takes one look at the four visitors and says exactly what she thinks.
The trouble is the script. Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao, who wrote it from a story they worked out with Lim, know the formula and follow it to the letter: the group splits at the two-thirds mark over something said in anger, and the last act is reconciliation, speeches and hugs. Every time a joke lands hard, the film pauses to tell us what the friendship means, as if worried we had missed it. The sharpest material, Audrey’s unease about where she belongs and who she is allowed to be, gets a handful of good lines and then an embrace. Nathan Matthew David’s score turns up mostly for the hugs, strings under the apologies, and the pop soundtrack does the rest.
By the last twenty minutes we were being asked to cry and found we were not inclined to. The film had spent an hour earning our laughter and seemed to assume the tears would follow on the same ticket. They did not, and we were a little cross about it, because Park is more than capable of the quiet scenes and the script gives her one and a half.
Bridesmaids (2011) worked because the gross-out came out of Kristen Wiig’s misery; the jokes and the story were the same thing. Here they are bolted together and take turns. The Hangover (2009) never wanted to mean anything and was the leaner for it. Joy Ride wants both and manages one, which is more than most comedies in this shape manage.
See it with friends who are not easily embarrassed, and at home, where you can go back to the train carriage and forward through the speeches. It carries a 15 certificate and uses it. Annie Mumolo, who plays Mary Sullivan, co-wrote Bridesmaids, and will not have needed the plot explained to her.
Most critics like Joy Ride, and they like it for the same things. The praise clusters on the four leads, whose chemistry is credited with holding the film together between its set pieces, and on Adele Lim’s confidence in her first feature as director. Nearly every review notes that the raunch is paired with something about Asian-American identity and belonging, and most think the pairing works.
The reservations are consistent too: the story is thin, and the final act turns sentimental in a way several reviewers find shoehorned. The spread is narrow at the top and wider below. Vulture argues the film never gets as uncomfortable as it means to. Film Stories finds the emotional core moving but the comedy repetitive. Sight and Sound calls it overstuffed and hollow. The Telegraph is the outlier, dismissing it as a stale girls-on-tour formula transported to China.
A worthy successor to Bridesmaids-style gross-out comedies that also thoughtfully deconstructs Asian identity. The audacious directorial debut balances raunch with heartfelt exploration.
Read the full review →The critic praises the raunchy Asian American comedy as an overdue, outrageous buddy movie that delivers hall-of-fame comedy set pieces. The film is celebrated for giving its cast a chance to cut loose but noted for lacking a particularly strong storyline.
Read the full review →The critic finds it a hilariously raunchy road trip that stands on its own merits while adding pathos to an identity story, welcoming it as a strong studio-backed ensemble comedy. She praises the daring comedic ensemble and the balance of laughs with deeper themes of heritage.
Read the full review →It delivers hands-over-eyes, wretched hilarity in a raunchy, clusterfuck road trip that excels at squirm-inducing microaggressions and realistic friend dynamics among the Asian-American leads. The critic praises the buddy-boner humour but complains about shoe-horned sentimentality and sappy self-discovery beats.
Read the full review →The critic finds the exuberantly rude comedy gives its stars the raunch-pad they deserve, turning predictable beats into spiky cultural distinctions. It balances raunchy humor with warmth and emotional vibrancy from the cast.
Read the full review →An unapologetically bold, brash raunchfest that proves marginalised groups can be as wild and gross as traditional bro comedies while digging into identity issues. Elevated by strong performances.
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BridesmaidsThe model, with the same writer’s fingerprints and jokes that grow out of the misery.
Girls Trip · not reviewed yetSame shape in New Orleans; Tiffany Haddish out-rudes everyone here without breaking sweat.
The FarewellThe quiet version of the family-in-China story; the ache without the drugs.
Return to SeoulA French adoptee hunts her birth parents in Korea; no jokes, twice the sting.
Withnail and ITwo friends, one trip, no luck; British, soused, and funnier than it has any right to be.
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