Review Joy Ride – Review on FilmTotaal
Director: adela lim | Script: Cherry Chevapravatdumrong, Teresa Hsiao | Cast: Ashley Park (Audrey), Sherry Cola (Lolo) Stephanie Hsu (Kat), Sabrina Wu (Deadeye), Ronnie Chieng (Chao), ea | Time to play: 92 minutes | Year: 2023
joy ride is the directorial debut of the author of crazy rich asiansfrom a script by two women with extensive experience in the stable of Seth MacFarlane (Family man, the orville), produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. That should give you a pretty good idea of what kind of movie this is.
If those names mean nothing to you: joy ride It is more or less girls trip but with four Asian-American women, the group dynamic of Bridesmaids and the sporadic absurdity of Harold and Kumar go to the White Castle. In terms of humor, the film is similar to these titles. An extremely flat matter that some people care about and others care little about.
Opposites Audrey and Lolo have been best friends since childhood, being the only children of Asian descent in the aptly named White Hills. For years that was upset by the explicit racism of his fellow citizens, today it’s especially upset by the exaggerated way in which people like Audrey’s colleague present themselves as ‘allies’. No doubt with good intentions, but he only sees her as an Asian woman rather than a full-fledged colleague who has come far from her in the legal profession.
That nearsightedness is probably why she is sent to China to close an important deal, even though she barely speaks Chinese. Therefore, Girlfriend Lolo can come as an interpreter. She, in turn, takes an unworldly cousin with her and is soon joined in China by another acquaintance. Just because, The Hangover in girls trip it also had four-person companies and that formula for success will not be questioned.
The plot is actually very little. Audrey’s Chinese contact thinks it’s important to know where you’re from, so our main character, who was adopted by white people, can look up her birth mother in China so she can make a good impression at a party. It is a doable fact, but quite forced in the plot.
The search for their birth mother is there primarily to take the foursome from one comedic situation to the next. The difficulty of laughing will vary depending on the viewer, but in any case, the film is very joke-dense, and the jokes are unabashedly vulgar and flat. Still, it could have been a bit stronger tomorrow. A joint K-pop performance by WAP (by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion) is one of the few occasions where humor meets some creativity.
First-time director Adele Lim also seems a little anxious for her movie to die as soon as there are no more laughs, so there’s a joke to be made every ten seconds. At least in the first two acts. They’re full of rude comments and funny scenes, but as soon as the third act rolls around, they suddenly have to give way to sentiment. It feels unbalanced and hard to reconcile with the countless comments about a tattooed vagina from a minute earlier.
Fortunately, the film has four sympathetic main characters with well-defined personalities, each aptly played by Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, Stephanie Hsu, and Sabrina Wu. And because joy ride Unlike Bridesmaids in girls trip not half an hour long, but with a civilized hour and a half, you won’t be completely tired of these characters by the end.
It is striking that the entire company has to provide humor. There is no counterbalance of a more serious character that approaches everything more rationally (the so-called ‘upright man’). As a result, each of the actresses seems to want to become the new Awkwafina. One certainly the Awkwafina of crazy rich evans and the other that of The farewell, still. On the other hand, there’s clearly no lack of charisma, so there’s a good chance that some big names will emerge from this relatively unknown foursome.
It’s also refreshing that all four women, with the exception of a few, aren’t overly concerned with the men in their lives. What is striking is that the indications that one of them is a lesbian are not pursued. This raises the question of whether a scene has been removed to appease China’s homophobic censors, which wouldn’t be the first time for a Hollywood production. A movie can still get away with foul language, sex with complete strangers, and excessive use of alcohol and drugs, but homosexuality apparently remains too far a bridge for the Chinese viewer.