Road Trip (2000)

2 out of 4

Starring: Breckin Meyer, Seann William Scott, Amy Smart, Tom Green, Paulo Costanzo, DJ Qualls, Fred Ward, Anthony Rapp, Rachel Blanchard

Director: Todd Phillips

Time: 93 mins

Tasteless comedy became fashionable again in the last year, following the success of flicks like Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and Big Daddy. But it was the teenage sex comedy, American Pie, that was the big surprise. Its combination of crude jokes, nudity, and genuinely funny situations made it a big hit with young cinemagoers everywhere. The similarly themed Road Trip, about the adventures of a group of sex-crazed college boys, tries to follow in the same vein. There is gratuitous nudity, frequent bad taste, and a lot of jokes involving the body's lower regions. There is even the presence of a common cast member, Seann William Scott, who was memorable as Stifler in American Pie and plays a similar character in Road Trip. But while American Pie was consistently funny, had characters that were well-developed, and even contained a touching romance, Road Trip just falls flat on its face trying to repeat those same elements.

Josh Porter (Breckin Meyer) and his childhood sweetheart Tiffany Henderson (Rachel Blanchard) have been conducting a long-distance relationship ever since they decided to go to different universities - he in upstate New York and she in Austin, Texas. At a party held by hormone-overloaded pal E.L. (Scott, who always seems to throw wild parties in these movies), he falls for the charm of Beth (Amy Smart) and spends the night with her. The trouble is, they have the whole event captured on video and the tape is mistakenly mailed to Tiffany in Texas. With the help of E.L., brainy roommate Rubin (Paulo Costanzo) and meek Kyle (DJ Qualls), Josh embarks on a hasty road trip to Texas to retrieve the tape. Meanwhile, demented Barry Manilow (yes - this is the level of humour), played by TV comic Tom Green, endeavours to feed a mouse to Rubin's pet snake, while jealous teaching assistant Jacob (Anthony Rapp) conspires to have Josh fail his philosophy exam. Beth is also in search of Josh, and Kyle's parents run around trying to locate their son.

The main problem with Road Trip is a lack of cohesion in the plot. While it's a given that a road movie is meant to be a series of episodes that occur on a long journey, it's also expected that these episodes be memorable enough to cover the loosely structured story. The events that happen on the journey in Road Trip are pretty ho-hum, to say the least. Previous road movie classics like The Sure Thing (1985), Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), It Happened One Night (1934) and even National Lampoon's Vacation (1983) all contained moments or situations that lifted them above the norm. What our boys endure on their road trip is nothing special, and not even that funny, except for a stopover at an all-black fraternity house. Here the dancing style of lanky Kyle during a rap party brings some big laughs, but they were about the only big laughs throughout the whole movie. And when the clan do reach Austin, Texas, the resolution of the mistaken videotape storyline is so poor that one wonders what was the point of it all. Yes, yes - the film is more about the boys and their road trip (hence its title), but since the script goes to such laborious lengths to give them a reason for their journey, I expected a better conclusion. Heck, why not make one of the boys win $10,000 for some unknown reason, and the lucky guy decides to take his mates on a ... road trip! It would have been the same outcome.

Another factor that detracted from Road Trip is the character played by Tom Green. This guy is so weird and crazy that his antics become silly after a while. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why he wants to repeatedly see a snake eat a mouse, and the film's focus on his efforts to do so made me groan every time his face appeared on screen. While idiosyncratic oddballs have always been a staple of comedies, Tom's character just seems to be there to elicit gasps and howls of shock and disbelief, rather than laughter. We learn he's been at the university for eight years, and nothing else. Maybe that's what drove him crazy. Contrast with the father played by Eugene Levy in American Pie: a source of acute embarrassment for his son, but a provider of hilarity and endearment for the audience.

The other actors, especially the four leads, are fine, though only Seann William Scott, in a reprise of his Stifler character from American Pie, and DJ Qualls, as the weak-willed one who breaks out of his shell (shades of Alan Ruck's Cameron from Ferris Bueller's Day Off), stand out. Amy Smart (Starship Troopers) and, in a lesser role, Rachel Blanchard (TV's Clueless), are ok, though they seem be there more for their looks than anything else. But then, what else do you expect from a teen-oriented movie that utilises below-the-belt humour at every turn? Pretty girls almost seem to be a prerequisite for these movies. On another note, TV's Andy Dick is fun (and almost unrecognisable) as a weirdo motel clerk, but veteran Fred Ward is a bit of a waste as the angry father of Kyle.

While some reviewers raved that Road Trip is even funnier than American Pie, I can't concur. The similarities are obviously there, right down to the inclusion of the actor who played Stifler, but the relatively unexciting events on the road trip itself don't offer anything memorable. There are some laughs in Road Trip, but they are few and far between, not to mention forced. Combined with a totally annoying weird character, Road Trip is a fairly mediocre film, and not up to the level of consistent hilarity that American Pie provided.

(c) Joe Wong (16 August 2000)