Global Courant
There’s a moment in Adele Lim’s Joy Ride where a basketball, Theragun, and an internally exploded condom full of cocaine come together to shatter a man’s pelvis during an impromptu sex act on the floor of a hotel gym with Oscar-nominated actor Stephanie Hsu .
Not only is it far from the raunchiest scene in the movie, it might not even be in her character’s top three.
Watching the Lionsgate-distributed, Seth Rogen-produced new comedy, it’s impossible to ignore the heavy brutal content the four stars dish out during its relatively brief 95-minute runtime.
As we follow them through the US, then China, then one last late stop a little further east, it’s all you can do to wade through the admittedly thin plot to extract a quote from it that really suitable for printing. (My favorite? “He’s a rat!” uttered in response to Audrey’s pathetic attempt to prove her attraction to Asian guys by pointing out her occasional feelings for Splinter from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.)
But as I was argued in a series of email essay responses to my Indiana Jones review (some with a similar, if less light-hearted, penchant for profanity), you can’t judge a fish by how good it is at a tree climbs. So if you expect this fish to be the Hays code, you will be disappointed. But if your yardstick is how often the movie manages to make audiences cry over swearing kids and vagina tattoos, this guppy is a winner.
Joy Ride’s success isn’t in its character arcs or story – at least not in its first two acts, both of which are closer to an SNL sketch or Keenen Wayans movie than, say, The Lobster or Hsu’s past crushes Everything Everywhere All at Once. But the sheer fast-paced, uninhibited style and expert delivery of its many gags unequivocally demand laurels in a genre more relentless to mediocrity than any other.
Because if highbrow comedies (or, even better, dramas) don’t make you laugh, they can at least pretend to be smart. A film like Joy Ride, meanwhile, makes no attempt to disguise its intentions behind depth, metaphor, or even good taste – a silent theater would only spell failure. And if the decibel level in my theater is any indication, it’s far from the case here.
Writer-director Adele Lim and writers Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao opted for a painting by number plot scaffolding. In the almost runaway train-paced opening, we meet childhood best friends Audrey and Lolo – played as adults by Ashley Park and Sherry Cola, respectively. While Lolo was raised by her birth parents, who still have ties to their extended family in China, Audrey was adopted from China by white parents and has no ties to her blood relatives.
Fast forward a few decades, and Audrey is a lawyer, while Lolo gets by making sex and body-positive imagery of questionable quality. But while Audrey’s life is going just fine on paper, Lolo is the one who is more sure of herself – something that comes to a head shortly after the two leave for China on a work assignment for Audrey for a non-specific – but necessarily terrible – deal to close. with a customer.
Along with Lolo’s traveling cousin Deadeye (Sabrina Wu) and Audrey’s best friend from college, now famed actor Kat (Hsu), the four are soon turned into Hangover style after a misunderstanding causes them to lose their passports and Audrey’s birth mother has to track down. somewhere in China, and then present it to the client by the end of the week.
Buddy movie update
The genre-obvious ticking clock imperative is complicated by the conflicting emotions their cross-country quest evokes in Audrey – with each century egg, cheongsam and judgmental local she encounters, she becomes more confused and has doubts about where she belongs.
It’s a slightly interesting twist on the kind of storylines we’ve seen in Bridesmaids, Superbad and, of course, The Hangover, films that Joy Ride has already tirelessly compared to – although Joy Ride’s overly compressed jokes per minute rate makes the storyline feel more like a sideshow and closer to Good Boys territory.
Nevertheless, Joy Ride follows the familiar formulas of those popular buddy movies to a tee – an ensemble cast desperately trying to keep up a lie long enough for an approved third party to present with whatever MacGuffin promised the main character plays the straight man who is tortured by their own manipulations until they accept themselves for who they really are.
The characters in Joy Ride also consist of the same archetypes. While the numbers vary, beyond the main character there’s the requisite lifelong friend and foil, whose frustrating immaturity ultimately proves to be a model of authenticity, our protagonist was too blind to see. Besides them, the clumsy, absurd, deviant and likable McLovin type is there both to drive our characters apart and ultimately bring them together – while acting as the biggest marketing draw (for Joy Ride, Wu’s Deadeye is literally labeled “the chaotic in promotional materials).
But as predictable as the building blocks are, the whole is shockingly funnier than the sum of its parts. While grade B buddy movies tend to have a highlight or two, pretty much any person who gets a fancy for Joy Ride knocks it out of the park. There’s no clue in the bunch, even though Park’s role as the protagonist forces her to downplay the ridiculousness. Lolo and Deadeye more than make up for that, with Kat finally coming through in a breathtaking Cardi B-inspired musical number that culminates in a rare comedic example of full female nudity in film.
While Joy Ride fits the genre defined by Superbad, Bridesmaids, and The Hangover, its sharp jokes make it more than worth it. (Ed Araquel/Lionsgate)
And as rare as it is, that was Joy Ride’s intention. Its entire performance transcends the confines of the genre it so clearly apes, as the punch-up gags refute the weary conceit that “you can’t joke about anything anymore”.
From Deadeye’s mockery of what amounts to Asian umarells – hunched over older men and women walking around with their arms clasped behind their backs – to Lolo’s endless series of jokes about sex and genitals, Joy Ride pokes fun at both race and gender without ever either to make both. the pivot of the joke.
And while Forgetting Sarah Marshall’s full-frontal male nudity and Sausage Party’s essentially 90-minute penis joke get a pass, similar framing with non-binary and female characters of the sort Joy Ride often tries to succumb to knee-jerk hostility from audiences scarred by Political debates fueled by Amy Schumer about acceptability and morality.
My advice to moviegoers is to ignore those weary deceptions and, even if you feel like tapping out after the second puke scene, do your best. When it comes to Joy Ride, the jokes justify the means.
