Road Trip (2000) Rating: 3.0 stars out of 5.0 stars
Cast: Breckin Meyer, Seann William Scott, Amy Smart, Tom Green, Paulo Costanzo, DJ Qualls, Rachel Blanchard, Anthony Rapp, Fred Ward, Andy Dick, Ethan Suplee, Horatio Sanz, Mary Lynn Rajskub Written by: Todd Phillips and Scot Armstrong Directed by: Todd Phillips Running Time: 91 minutes Screening Theater: Starnet Pablo 9 Theaters - Jacksonville Beach, FL
"Unleash the fury!" --- Barry (Tom Green), giving words of encouragement to a snake, in Road Trip.
For whatever reason, the genre of the raunchy sex comedy disappeared in the late 80s. It was revitalized in the mid-90s thanks mainly to the efforts of the Farrelly brothers and their films Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, and most importantly There's Something About Mary. Last year, American Pie solidified the new success of the genre. Now comes Road Trip, and its impending success should keep the genre going well into the future (for better or for worse). It's certainly better than American Pie in every way imaginable.
Not only is Road Trip the current "bearer of the torch" for the raunchy sex comedy genre, but it's also the breakout movie for MTV personality Tom Green. I'm not a fan of Green's antics on his show, but here he proves he can be funny when he's under the restraints of a script. I'm usually against any kind of creative restrainment, but in Green's case it's a good idea. It prevents him from making screeching noises for 90 minutes straight... as he's known to do.
Green plays Barry, the film's storyteller. He relates the events of the film involving him and a group of his friends to a tour group he's leading at Ithica University. The story that Barry tells us is this... Josh Porter (Breckin Meyer) cheats on his lifelong girlfriend (who attends a college halfway across the country from Josh) when he believes that she has done the same, and he accidentally mails her a video tape of the incident. When he learns that his assumptions were incorrect, he (and three of his friends, for no real reason except to give the movie more characters) set out to intercept the package before his girlfriend receives it.
Now I know it's hard to argue logic with movies like this, but I do wonder why Green seems much smarter as he's telling the story than he is IN the story. If you were telling a story, wouldn't you make yourself look good? He does take some liberties, giving a few details "his way"... but you'd think he'd make himself look better than he comes off.
Logic argument #2: Meyer gleefully cheats on his girlfriend because he believes she's done the same. When he finds out that the sex tape has been mailed to her, he freaks out. Now he shouldn't really care at this point because his whole point of cheating on her was to get back at her. When he finds out that she was actually at her grandfather's funeral and that she hadn't cheated on him, THAT'S when he should have started to be upset. It would have been funnier to have him not care about the tape being mailed and THEN find out he was wrong.
An unfortunate aspect of Road Trip is its rampant similarity to another recent comedy, the little seen 1998 film Overnight Delivery starring Paul Rudd and Reese Witherspoon. In Overnight Delivery, Rudd and his longtime sweetheart (Christine Taylor) attend separate colleges. When Rudd's character thinks that his girlfriend has cheated on him, he and stripper Witherspoon take risqué pictures of themselves and mail them to her, only to find out after the package was mailed that his assumptions were wrong. The two sent out on a cross country trek to recover the pictures before the girlfriend gets them. Sound similar?
Both the situations in Overnight Delivery and Road Trip are also initiated by the bitchy roommates of each girlfriend, and both have the same resolution. Now I'm not saying that Road Trip stole its story from Overnight Delivery just because Overnight Delivery came out first, because who knows what was written first? Yes, the two stories are incredibly similar, more so than they should be actually. But it was a major distraction to see a movie I had basically already seen before (and much better actually).
Most of the "big" jokes in Road Trip miss big time (the goofballs in the screening roared at almost everything in the film though, even the scenes that were in the film's trailer). And speaking of trailers, add Road Trip to the list of trailers that features scenes that aren't in the movie itself (and I'm not referring to the scenes with Tom Green that were shot specifically for the trailer).
Anyway, the smaller moments worked very well, and clearly sailed right over the heads of the aforementioned goofballs. Lots of witty dialogue and just the sheer energy of the cast make this movie worthwhile. A small, hilarious role by Andy Dick ("NewsRadio") is almost worth the price of admission alone.
The success of Road Trip will undoubtedly encourage even more entries in the genre. And as long as they include the same types of entertaining little moments for me mixed in with the raunchiness to please the masses, everyone should be happy.
Reviewed by Chuck Dowling - chuckd21@fdn.com AOL Instant Messenger: FilmJax The Jacksonville Film Journal - http://www.jaxfilmjournal.com/
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