Review of The Trip (2011) by Eric O — 17 Sep 2012

Michael Winterbottom's worked with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon before. It's been great then, and it's great now.

The Trip is pretty much a condensed film version of a 6-episode BBC2 series. There's not a whole lot to say about it, as words themselves don't do the simple, pleasant experience much justice. Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon dominate and essentially ARE themselves, playing slightly skewered versions of themselves - as in the great Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story - by the same name as a pair of buddies on a restaurant tour through the English countryside. The whole film follows their largely improvised conversations as they constantly try to upstage each other, Rob cracks himself up, and Steve continues to think of himself as a greater talent and finds himself irritated time and time again by his jovial companion in his own loneliness.

Their respective wits and talents carry the film, along with the beauty of the English countryside as they drive from destination to destination. There wasn't a lot of music that I can recall, but what was there served as an appropriate compliment to the film.

In the end, The Trip winds down on a note of quiet poignancy, looking at the quiet gulf that exists between the lives of the two friends, leading lives as different as they do in these character versions of themselves they play, bringing things to a close on an appropriately bittersweet moment with just a touch of pathos that doesn't serve to dilute the simple, pleasant experience that the film amounts to. Two great, very funny actors playing off each other with their wicked senses of humor while eating good food and driving to beautiful places. The Trip won't change your life, but like its title implies, it's a nice little vacation from everything else - sit down, get a bite to eat yourself, and laugh yourself silly.