Road Trip (2000) / Comedy

MPAA Rated: R for strong sexual content, crude humor, language and drug use
Running Time: 93 min.

Cast: Breckin Meyer, Seann William Scott, Amy Smart, Tom Green  
Director: Todd Phillips
Screenplay: Todd Phillips, Scot Armstrong
Review published June 19, 2000

I suppose those looking for a goofball comedy full of easy laughs and memorable gross-out moments will be pleased with Road Trip enough to find it worthwhile. Going into it, gross and stupid humor is all I expected, and I was not disappointed. Needless to say, I also was not pleasantly surprised.

The plot is so simple, it could probably be explained in one line. A college knucklehead and his loser friends travel by car from Texas to New York in hopes of retrieving a videotape sent to his girlfriend revealing an indiscretion, and along the way they have nonstop bizarre adventures and meet even stranger people.

With a plot this anemic, it serves merely as a vehicle to showcase some bathroom humor and sexual shenanigans for easy laughs. Its spirit and level of humor is sure to please fans of lowbrow comedies such as American Pie, and needs the "rowdy bunch" factor (seeing the film with boisterous friends) in order to be properly appreciated. The actors are likeable, and smooth direction by Phillips (Old School, Starsky & Hutch) helps keep the film buoyant, with a good use of music to punctuate the various scenes and settings. Where Road Trip fails is in shameful laziness.

This is the kind of film that practically writes itself, with a script that a group of real college kids could write over the course of an evening. Just think of a simple plot, fill in enough fart gags and naked women to last 90 minutes, and wrap it up with a silly happy ending A comedy like this is ok to watch once in a while, especially when you're not looking for anything heavy. Too many of these may be hazardous to your health as your brain may atrophy, but then, if this kind of movie is all you watch it probably happened to you already.

Qwipster's rating:

©2000 Vince Leo