Review: The Guilt Trip

The Guilt Trip
Cert: 12 / 95 mins / Dir. Anne Fletcher



Now it wouldn't be unfair to expect a road-trip movie pairing the king of mainstream stoner comedy with a running joke from South Park to be… well, a broad, bland, sell-out mess, frankly. And there are a few of moments where Anne Fletcher's film lurches straight for that exit… but for the most part I found it to be chuckle-level funny and refreshingly sweet natured.

The real selling-point is the chemistry between Rogen and Streisand; Neither of them overplay their roles, but there's enough constant, well-meaning, bickering tension for their relationship to be believable. This is crucial as the majority of the movie is just the two of them sharing dialogue, and they pull it off beautifully. The rest is road-trip-by-numbers of course, and it's certainly no worse than others we've had in recent times, but there's also a feeling the film's reach isn't trying to exceed its grasp. Ultimately, The Guilt Trip is a very satisfying, if slightly lazy, watch.
The sat-nav is well and truly on.

Call me a grumpy middle aged man*¹, but it makes a nice change to see Rogen being funny in a comedy which doesn't feature a slo-mo montage of him and his buddies smoking weed, overlaid with Cypress Hill.

Damn, I sound like his mother.

Very.



Pretty much.



Yes.



Rent unless you're a Rogen/Streisand completist.



No.



At some point.



No, but that sound effect of the eagle that gets used more than the Wilhelm is there.

If you had to cast between two and four parts for your comedy road movie, who would you pick?

*¹ Call me it if you like, I'll probably agree with you *folds arms*

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 'catch-up' review. I watched this film at home, not at the cinema. I saw the trailer for this at the cinema, and I would have seen the film there too, but they didn't/couldn't show it. So now iTunes, Amazon, Netflix and Blockbuster get to reap the rewards of my local's advance-advertising, and I'm sure they're delighted. Now you may say "oh come on, they can't show everything down there", and that would be a valid point if they didn't do things like running Taken 2 for six weeks. Was it that successful? No, I don't think so. Twilight? Batman? Les Mes? Sure, go for it; if they're pulling the punters in then keep making that money. But Taken 2? I ask you. Anyway, this is essentially a DVD review, but still of a new(ish) film. There. I'm glad that's sorted.
• 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.