Review of Road Trip (2000) by Harry W — 30 Jun 2014

As I was one of the few who actually found Freddy Got Fingered to be a hilarious film, Road Trip sounded like it was worth a shot as it was another Tom Green comedy film.

Tom Green did not end up playing such a pivotal role in the film which meant that it was not what I was expecting, and it didn't exactly live up to the name of Sean William Scott either. The cast in the film feel generally tame and deliver their lines in a manner which is a bit too subtle to really lay down any kind of effect on the viewers which means that Road Trip largely fails to live up to its comedic potential. For a film with such a big name cast, Road Trip is a film which could have followed in the footsteps of American Pie yet seemed like a half-assed attempt to combine characters from a draft of the American Pie script into a college story. The thing is that Road Trip has its moments and does manage to supply some laughs here and there, but most of the time it is fairly restrained in its execution which means that it won't go over the top. The problem with that is that you can clearly see the film is intended to be more ludicrous and crude than it ends up being. I'm sure that some viewers will find the nature of Road Trip to be too crude in nature for their tastes, but considering the nature of the subject matter and the cast of the film, it should really hit a lot harder than it actually does. The humour of the film ends up way too subtle for its own good, and so the effect of the comedy in Road Trip is just way too poor for its own good. So the flaws in Road Trip can be attributed to its script. Perhaps I had my standards set a little too high for my own good, but the entertainment value in Road Trip really did not hit the mark. It was no Hangover, and it was no American Pie either even though it was clearly a combination of elements from both films.

The problem with Road Trip is the fact that it takes itself too seriously. It is a bit too focused in the general premise of trying to reach the destination at hand that it forgets to really implement in enough powerful jokes to carry it to the end. The nature of the jokes is a bit too light and the execution follows in those footsteps. Considering that director Todd Phillips would later create the hilarious road trip comedy The Hangover, it is surprising the way that he really cannot get a grip on the best comedic aspects of Road Trip. And when it comes down to the story, the actual titular Road Trip seemed pretty pointless because of the fact that the characters took a massive road trip to prevent a sexually themed video from reaching character Tiffany Henderson. And although it's giving away the ending, he ends up finding that the video was altered to hide everything and breaks up with Beth anyway. I wasn't too annoyed by this, but it really made me ask "what was the point?" of watching the film because it was all about a journey that had literally no point. And considering that along the way all that the film had to offer viewers were lame jokes which were executed without any real passion or charisma, there was really little to encourage me to call Road Trip a good film. It clearly had the best intentions at heart and I looked at the film saying "I want to be laughing at this", yet ended up being a massive disappointment. In short, Road Trip is not a particularly bad film, but it defies the potential to be funny in a crude sense by taking itself way too seriously and completely forgetting to implement enough good jokes in. It did not aspire to the level of comedy in the genre that it fits into and wallows in comparison to films like American Pie, or even to Freddie Got Fingered in my opinion which I am sure millions will disagree with. The thing is that Freddie Got Fingered was a film which had never heard of the word subtly, something that Todd Phillips was all too familiar with when he crafted Road Trip. He manages to implement in some nudity and does put a good cast up for show, but he fails to deliver a script which lives up to their talents and instead is nothing but extensively boring gags and a cast which seem to be having fun in the making of the film yet not transferring that fun over to the audience for their own enjoyment. The presence of Sean William Scott and Tom Green has the natural appeal for fans of them, but even their existence cannot save the film, and I'm a person who was able to enjoy all of the first three American Pie films as well as Freddie Got Fingered. And if I couldn't appreciate Road Trip when I could enjoy the rest, what does that tell you? Like I said, the humour of the film is just excessively subtle and it execution does not live up to the way that it was written or to the energetic talents that the cast are popular for. It is an easy film to watch, but as an experience it is not fun enough.

Like I said, the central problem in Road Trip all comes down to the quality of the comedy. It just is not that funny and is way too tame in comparison to the many superior films of the genre, and considering that it came at one of the most recent peaks of the teenage sex comedy genre in the early 2000's, it is just very disappointing.

So Road Trip is a thinly written film which wastes a talented cast on stale gags, a lack of meaningful story or fun and a plain lack or humour to carry itself to the end.