When you can’t think of anything cleverly funny to say, it’s best to get the cheap laugh and give ’em a fart joke, right? Well, that’s the approach Road Trip takes with its downright crude humor and simpleton plot.
When Josh (Breckin Meyer) accidentally sends his long-time girlfriend, Tiffany (Rachel Blanchard), a tape of him cheating, he and three buddies prepare for an eighteen hundred mile road trip to get it back. Instead of being a slaphappy comedy about some college kids encountering troubles on a cross country road trip, this is more like a rated R sitcom where the obstacles are so overwhelming that it’s too annoying to be funny.
MTV funny-man Tom Green as Barry sets the tone for Road Trip. Yes, he is funny, but he’s not in enough scenes to carry the pace and make the film all that enjoyable. His infatuation with a snake and feeding it rats is funny to a point, but there is this thing that we’ll call beating a dead horse. Not only that, but what exactly do Barry’s antics have to do with a road trip? Mix that with a talking dog and it’s just plain silly. It was like they were trying too hard to be funny so they threw in some random acts of comedy to compensate for the weak story. It just doesn’t work.
I have to admit there were a few scenes where I couldn’t help laughing, like when Rubin (Paulo Costanzo) tries to convince a national African-American fraternity that they’re members, and then there’s a cameo appearance by Andy Dick as an annoying hotel clerk. Is it all stupid? Yes. But that’s partly what makes it so funny. Still, it’s not funny enough to take away from the fact that most of the humor is made up of potty jokes with a main intent on grossing out the audience. Which, by the way, it does quite successfully.
I guess you could you look at it as the type of film that’s meant to be brainless humor. And while sometimes nothing is better than a stupid comedy with an empty plot, a vile cook stuffing breakfast down his pants before feeding it to an unknowing customer is just too disgusting, even for someone like me. I guess if the fart jokes get you rolling, Road Trip is the perfect dose of crass humor you’ve been waiting for.
+ Ashley Adams
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