Movie Review: Joy Ride

 

Michael's Movie Grade: B

A really fun raunchy comedy. 

Adele Lim's (co-writer of Crazy Rich Asians (2018) and Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)) directorial debut is a hard R rated comedy about four Asian-American friends who spend time in China together when one of them has an important business meeting there. For a film like this one of the most important ingredients is the characters. Luckily the characters here are all very likable. They may be very flawed, but they all have good hearts underneath all their flaws. At first the characters may seem like simple stereotypes but as the movie goes on, we begin to see that these stereotypes do not fully define them. Even if someone's life experiences are very different than these characters it is still easy to put yourself into their shoes and relate to them. This makes it so that we simply enjoy taking this trip with them. Because we enjoy spending time with them, it becomes very easy to simply have a good time watching them and having a good time is just what a movie like this is about. This also makes it so that in the more serious scenes (don't worry there aren't too many of them), we have enough of an emotional connection to the characters to make these scenes work. Included in this is a very effective tear-jerking scene, that surprised me by just how touching it is. It also makes us continue to have a good time even when some of the jokes fall flat. Of course, a lot of why these characters work is because of the wonderful performances from our four leads (Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, Sabrina Wu, Stephanie Hsu), all of whom are able to play completely over the top comedy while also making their characters believable. They also all have wonderful chemistry with each other. 

The humor for the most part works very well. While not all the jokes work, the ones that do truly made me laugh out loud (as did much of the audience I was with). For the most part the humor that works is the humor that comes not from the outrageous situations but from the characters. Deadeye playing an "American" card game with a little kid for instance absolutely cracked me up. One scene involving a basketball team is incredibly raunchy and over the top but worked because of how it played so perfectly off each character's personality. There are also times when pure outlandishness for outlandishness' sake could work very well too. The scene where our main characters dress as K-Pop stars is a perfect example of this. The scene is so over the top and crude, but so incredibly silly and playful that it made me laugh out loud. However, the film has trouble keeping its comedic momentum going throughout the whole length. Because of this there are times when the humor can lag a little because sometimes jokes or whole comic sequences simply don't work. There are even some running gags that fall flat whenever they show up (the boss who calls himself an "ally" for instance). However, the times when I laughed out loud more than made up for this. 

This movie also has the problem of having some supporting characters talk in dialogue that doesn't sound in any way how people actually talk. The film can also move a bit slow as it is setting up its story, but it does take off as it moves along. 

If you are a fan of comedies with a hard R rating, then you should definitely enjoy this movie.