Joy Ride

Audrey has always been the good kid, the over-achiever, the people-pleaser, but when her big business trip to Asia goes sideways, threatening to derail her career, she turns to Lolo, her slacker childhood best friend, Kat, her rising star actress best friend from college, and Deadeye, Lolo's strange cousin, to aid her on an epic journey of unbridled friendship, belonging, and wild debauchery, where they all learn a little bit about themselves… and each other.

Joy Ride is yet another example of the raunchy road trip formula being re-imagined, this time with four Asian women as the Good Kid, the Best Friend, the Cool One, and the Weirdo, instead of the usual four white guys filling those roles.

So, yeah, it’s fair to say that you’ve probably seen this film before. This isn’t a bad thing necessarily, it’s certainly not the only genre of film that simply takes the familiar story-framework and uses it as a rack to hang slightly different outfits on. When that happens, what ends up mattering is…

Are these new outfits any good?

It’s the usual set-up… As two of the only Asian Americans in their very, very white Pacific Northwest town, Audrey and Lolo were inseparable as kids. Audrey was the good one, and Lolo was the wild fun one. But as their life has gone on, they have taken different paths, and Audrey, now a hotshot lawyer, is moving in a direction that could end up leaving the wanna-be artist Lolo behind. Audrey was adopted by doting white parents, and Lolo was raised by her Chinese immigrant parents, so when Audrey asks Lolo to act as her interpreter on her One Big Shot business trip to China, Lolo jumps at the chance. This is an iffy idea, as Lolo has a lot of chaotic energy, and a tendency to blow shit up, especially when she’s feeling insecure. Also, Lolo invited her oddball cousin, a K-Pop obsessed weirdo known as Deadeye, on the trip, who is bringing her own special ability to make things awkward and weird. Once the trio meets up with Kat, Audrey’s promiscuous college best friend, who is now a rising star on a Chinese Wuxia TV show after cultivating a good girl public persona, Audrey’s hope for smooth sailing to seal the deal, and to get that big promotion to partner her boss promised, are dashed in a drug-addled, drunken, sex-fest haze of wild abandon and disasterous misunderstandings, where not only does the fate of Audrey’s entire career hang in the balance, but the friendship of the group as well…

Like I said… the usual.

There’s a little Intro/background/set-up of all the players, then it’s time for some wacky hijinks, maybe a few sexy hijinks, then a few more wacky hijinks, possibly a poop and/or butt joke, culminating in a moment of friendship and understanding and connection between the group where everything they have wanted for the entire trip all seems within their grasp, only for it all to be ruined when the lies are exposed and the truths they’ve been concealing all come out, resulting in a big fight, causing the once oh-so-tight group to fracture, and to go their separate ways, but then they get back together in the end, after realizing that their individual lives were improved by the group experience, and so, they all recommit themselves to their friendship, and head off into the sunset together, into their shared destiny of more wacky hijinks.

So, the answer to the question… Are the new outfits hung on this old rack any good? Is Joy Ride a laudable example of a familiar old genre?

Eh… sure.

Joy Ride is like a lot of Big Studio Comedies. It is definitely loaded with some funny people, who definitely do some funny shit, but you can see the “find the film in post” guiding light as it’s happening. As all the funny shit goes on, you can see the moment when the Creators suddenly realize they’ve only got about twenty minutes left, so they start scrambling to gather up as many loose threads as they can into a rope strong to tie the whole film together… and like always, the rope isn’t strong enough. The simple fact is, they just don’t have a full story here, and that’s why the “find the film in post” guiding light needs to be extinguished. Simply put, if your ending doesn’t land, then no one gives a fuck how high you soared on the way there.

Joy Ride is a big bold comedy, and it swings for the fences while built on an impressively nuanced foundation. The film walks a fine line between questions about belonging and outrageous jokes, but tone-wise… it’s uneven.

I will say that Joy Rider was better overall than the average big studio comedy, but that feels like pretty faint praise. Also, I really liked how the dichotomy of being from a different racial background, but raised in White America was a central theme to the film, exploring the reality of being Asian to White people and White to Asian people, and the jokes about both cultures were dead on and funny. So it was nice to see that kind of thing represented on screen among the usual pap about friendship, growing up, embracing who you are, and where you’re from, blah, blah, blah. Also, there was an unexpected and sincerely touching moment about connecting with your roots.

Plus, I’m all about telling whitey to fuck off, so thumb’s up to that.

So, while it’s definitely messy, both on-screen and narrative-wise, Joy Ride is fun. It's mostly lighthearted, it manages to land its big emotional moments, despite the paper-thin story, and the cast revels in the chance to have some raunchy fun. It’s a good time and has more than a few laughs, and for a film that is ultimately about the power of friendship and fart humor, that’s probably good enough.