Review of Road Trip (2000) by Tom D — 06 Jun 2010

After the huge success of American Pie, the style of comedy and production meant that many types of film settings were waiting to be explored in the same vein. Road Trip is such a film made, and surprisingly quite good.

Road Trip tells the tale of four college students that have to embark on a race against time to one of the college studentâ??s girlfriends dorm due to mistakenly sending her a videotape of her boyfriend having sex with someone else, and aim to intercept the videotape before she gets her hands on it, with plenty of things going wrong during the trip.

What I really like about Road Trip is that, unlike similar films (*cough* American Pie *cough*), is that the main characters are all likeable. While some of the crew are a little bit crazy, I can see other people I know just like them, even if they also stray into major stereotype at times (The nerd instantly springs to mind). There are also some excellent set pieces here, like the car jumping the bridge, the Black fraternity situation and the snakeâ??s revenge among others that are genuinely funny and not restricted to college or university humour.

Additionally, this is an incredibly simple premise, resulting in an easy, switch-your-brain-off kind of film. However that is all Road Trip will ever be; not a spectacular film, just solid entertainment for a good hour and a half. What takes the shine off this film is that some scenes are just a bit too crude for my liking â?? the pancakes part particularly uncomfortable to watch.

Road Trip is one of those typical turn-of-the-century films that do exactly what it says on the tin. The journey and the characters fit well with each other, and will leave you with some truly humorous incidents, but also some gruesome ones as well. I doubt I will be watching it in a hurry again, but will enjoy it once I stumble upon it again.