Review: Joy Ride

Joy Ride
Cert: 15 / 95 mins / Dir. Adele Lim / Trailer

Having been raised in America by adoptive white parents, Chinese-born Audrey (Ashley Park) is due to make a business-trip to her spiritual motherland where her best friend Lolo (Sherry Cola) tags along for moral support and suggests that Audrey should use the opportunity to track down her birth-mother. Along the way they're joined by Lolo's awkward friend Deadeye (Sabrina Wu), and once in China Audrey is reunited with her college-bestie Kat (Stephanie Hsu), who is now an actress on the brink of stardom.

When Audrey realises that connecting with her birth-mother could actually help her close the deal as well as bringing her personal fulfilment, the four undertake a fish-out-of-water transformational road trip to find her, find themselves and each other...

TEEN

So, the comedic sub-genre which gave us teen jaunts at the end of the last millennium and ratcheted up to pre-midlife-crises less than a decade later, has now taken the next step by transplanting the central plank of four American white men with four Asian-American women*¹. And while that kind of over-simplification does not help sell Joy Ride's many high-points and all they have to offer audiences on a broader cultural scale, it's no less true for that. The screenplay here is banking on its audience being familiar with the journey in advance, because it knows that the average punter can only handle so much being 'different'.

From the off, internal friction comes from Audrey being the successful lawyer archetype who fears she's out of her depth, Lolo is the loudmouthed but well-meaning slacker, Kat is the preening actress with devastating insecurities and Deadeye is the socially-crippled wildcard. All four of these are treated well by the film, but almost everyone else is a sketched-in placeholder. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (of Superbad fame) are named in the producer's-list and it shows. True to genre-form, Teresa Hsiao and Cherry Chevapravatdumrong's script isn't afraid to use profanity in lieu of crafted punchlines, as well as lazy but well-meaning gags about racism and sex organs in the same vein.

WERE

For all the extremity of the jokes, director Adele Lim does display genuine heart and sincerity when it comes to characters finding the line between discovering their past as a means of belonging to something, but not letting the weight of that heritage hold them back from forging their own futures. Ashley Park's scene with Daniel Dae Kim and Michelle Choi-Lee late in the movie is utterly delightful. If anything it's a shame that this emotion acts as a coda to the third act, rather than its backbone.

But for all this reviewer's cynicism, the bottom line is that Joy Ride works as a perfectly serviceable Saturday night comedy. It's a sledgehammer rather than a scalpel, but there's no denying that most of the jokes do land firmly as a result. The final product may not be especially unique, but the film does what the film does perfectly within its own remit.

HEINZ

And yet much like No Hard Feelings currently doing the rounds, this smacks of a screenplay that's been floating across various desks for the last twenty years. There are clear demographic reasons why this version of the movie wouldn't have been greenlit back in the early 00s*², and it's debatable if the 2023-iteration is pushing boldly forward or just playing catchup.

Joy Ride is, though, indecently decent. And I'm adding points for the deserved use of Maroon 5 and Mumford & Sons as a deadpan punchline. But I'm taking points off for the big emotional monologue in the restaurant-finale that drops in 'greatest-hits' clips of the movie we've all just sat through, and taking more points off for having the diners burst into applause at the end of it.

There are some places we just don't need to go back to...

*¹ Don't write in. I'm very aware as I write that line that Sabrina Wu is non-binary, as is their character in the film, Deadeye. And I love and respect the fuck out of that (especially the fact that it's addressed in the script but doesn't turn into A Thing), but I assure you that on a marketing, demographic and "being The Hangover but the opposite of that" level, this ticks all the boxes of A Film About Four Women. Less is more, and in the context of Joy Ride it's probably the only thing in the movie which is underplayed. This is also way more queer-friendly than any version of the movie with four blokes would be, and is better for it... ^{[ BACK ]}

*² For what it's worth Joy Ride was part of Cineworld's Secret Screening programme, where viewers didn't know what they'll be watching until the BBFC card after the ads and trailers. Always a gamble. And given the very non-Caucasian angle of the movie, fair play to the one couple who at least waited through a full twenty minutes of dick-jokes before deciding this wasn't for them and leaving early. Because I had immediate visions of this being The Hate U Give all over again, where just under 30 punters walked out in the first ten minutes, presumably because they all remembered they'd left the iron on or something. That must have been it, yes... ^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Bad Moms

Bad Moms
Cert: 15 / 101 mins / Dir. Scott Moore & Jon Lucas / Trailer


I'd long suspected it, of course, but it appears that The Hollywood Corporation™ actually has a dedicated department (of rolling-staff) whose sole function is to pen distinctly substandard screenplays, then title them with the word "bad" followed by the description of the main character(s) in a self-effacing attempt to just ride that shit out. Neighbours, Grandpa, Teacher, Education. Each one with the adjective-part of the title serving as a direct warning.

Is it a warning I heed..? Of course not.

I'll be completely upfront, while that trailer didn't fill me with confidence, I really wanted to like Bad Moms as it's got a great central cast. Mila Kunis and Kristen Bell are on top form*¹, and Kathryn Hahn deftly steals every scene she's in. Christina Applegate tries her damnedest to make the most of 'generic evil PTA mom', and pretty much everyone else is a cardboard cut-out with the words "Insert characterisation post-prod" written where the face should be.

As is par for the course these days, the aforementioned trailer outlines the film far more thoroughly than it should, but far from spoiling the best gags, the final cut actually features many less-funny variants and ad-libs*² of the lines we've seen several times, undercutting its own attempts to bring the trailer-watching audience something fresh.

Perhaps the most insulting thing about this ode to dysfunctional motherhood is that it's actually written and directed by two guys. Not just any two guys, but the two guys who wrote The Hangover. Now, I like the Hangover movies, but they are very much what they are; blokey films for blokes by blokes. So there's a part of the equation in Bad Moms which doesn't really hang together. It appears that Messrs Moore and Lucas toyed with crafting a spiritual cousin of Bridesmaids, but ended up knocking out an oestrogen-flavoured Hall Pass instead.

I stand by my recent Twitter tirade.

Now obviously, this film wasn't aimed at me, and I by no means hated it. But it loses a point for the final twenty minutes, which are so excruciatingly patronising that they make Emma Roberts' anarchist-mollifying crescendo in Nerve look like James Dean spitting at a vicar's mum. Every misty-eyed, head-tilting, single-tear, standing-ovation-sparking, group-hugging, forced-nostalgia moment, (from Mila's rousing appearance at the PTA election night to the credits-accompanying footage of the cast sitting on sofas with their real-life mums and talking about how simply wonderful everything is) has been calculatingly laid out to convince the audience they've watched something emotionally worthy, rather than just over an hour and a half of dick-jokes and chronically lazy stereotyping.

Credit where it's due though, the rest of tonight's advance-screening audience found the film audibly and regularly amusing. They're either nowhere near as jaded as I am, or the glue-fumes blowing through the air-conditioning units just didn't reach as far as seat F11.

The Bad Moms DVD will, of course, be a staple fixture on the 'Mother's Day Gift Ideas' supermarket display-stands from next year until around the time the Earth goes hurtling into the Sun. And after the last twenty minutes of this movie, I probably wouldn't mind if that was sooner rather than later…

Bad [x] films.
And bad films.



Only if you're desperate to see it as soon as possible and can't wait until it's on the £3 DVD rack.



No.



No.



Amazingly, no.



No.



Level 2: This film's got Jada Pinkett Smith in it, who also starred in 2008's The Women alongside Carrie 'Leia' Fisher.




*¹ Although the placement of Kunis and Bell in particular is the second time in as many days that I've been reminded I'd rather be watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

*² Several featuring my second-favourite kind of ad-libbing, where one character delivered a combination feed/punch-line, then someone else on-screen basically describes what just happened and why it's funny. To wit, one character falls over while another stands and winces, saying "oh, that hurt!", their role existing purely to deliver the explanation. Alternatively, one character repeats what another character says for comic effect. The second character berates the first character for repeating them, also for comic effect. Then twenty minutes later, the whole thing is re-enacted again in a different scene. #Comedy

*³ And let's look on the bright-side here. With Jupiter Ascending now fully out in the wild, it's not like any new movie can be Mila Kunis' worst one, right..? (and if you're reading this Mila, that's not a challenge)



DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.