Post by Dracula on Jul 23, 2023 17:53:08 GMT -5
Joy Ride(7/12/2023)
About a month after Jennifer Lawrence tried to bring the Apatow model of R-rated comedies back with No Hard Feelings we’ve got the movie Joy Ride, which is trying to bring back the Bridesmaids/The Hangover model of the same genre and with similar results. The film follows a straight-laced Asian-American lawyer named Audrey (Ashley Park) as she takes a trip to China to close a deal for her law firm accompanied by her much less straight-laced childhood friend Lolo (Sherry Cola) and two other friends. As you can probably guess a whole bunch of wacky hijinks ensue. On one level this movie has a lot going for it. I think all four of the actresses are strong and come up with interesting character archetypes to adopt and I think there are some interesting observations about Asian-American identities to be found here alongside some very raunchy antics. On the other hand, man, even for a fratty comedy this thing sure has a sloppy and ramshackle script. This thing pretty regularly has character kind of losing the plot and doing highly illogical things in order to move things from one place to another (literally and figuratively). A lot of these logical leaps and plot holes could probably be dismissed as nitpicks but they do add up and become a legit distraction at certain points. The sloppiness even extends to the film’s title; joy riding refers to driving a possibly stolen car fast, not going on a wild vacation. In another context the film may have had enough going for it to overcome those problems but I don’t think it has enough going for it to overcome the general tiredness of its format. As I concluded with No Hard Feelings before this, Hollywood just desperately needs to come up with a new way to make comedies generally because the well is running pretty dry on the 2010s model and this movie isn’t really able to overcome that.
**1/2 out of Five