Joy Ride review – hands-over-eyes, wretched hilarity

Four Asian-Amer­i­can women jour­ney to Chi­na, an adven­ture which turns into a com­plete clus­ter­fuck of a road trip as they bounce between mishaps, dis­cov­er each oth­ers’ worst sides and try to make peace with their con­flict­ing cul­tur­al roots in Joy Ride. Direc­tor Adele Lim (Crazy Rich Asians), makes her fea­ture debut with this riotous, if some­times a bit sap­py, lady-bon­er comedy.

Audrey (Ash­ley Park) and Lolo (come­di­an Sher­ry Cola) have been best mates since they were tiny, when the lat­ter beat up baby racists in the play­ground on behalf of the for­mer, who was adopt­ed by white par­ents. Lolo is chaot­ic, cheeky and cock­sure – an artist liv­ing in Audrey’s spare room, played with fre­net­ic aplomb by Cola. Audrey is a pristine­ly turned-out hot­shot lawyer who plays squash at lunchtime with her Boomer boss, and whose assumed White­ness and inter­nalised racism is the sub­ject of good gags galore. Audrey takes Lolo on her work trip to Chi­na as a trans­la­tor, and Lolo invites her awk­ward non-bina­ry cousin Dead­eye (Sab­ri­na Wu), who loves K‑Pop and hangs out pre­dom­i­nant­ly online.

After land­ing in Chi­na, the trio ren­dezvous with Audrey’s old col­lege room­mate Kat (Stephanie Hsu) – for­mer­ly wild, but now leav­ing room for Jesus for her Bible-bash­ing beef­cake fiancée – who instant­ly grinds Lolo’s gears. The gang accom­pa­ny Audrey to work drinks with the Chi­nese busi­ness­man (Ron­nie Chieng) she’s been tasked with strik­ing a deal with, and things go amus­ing­ly awry as she tries and fails to prove her­self in the face of thou­sand-year-old-egg shots. To save the deal, the gang must track down her birth moth­er to prove her­self to every­one, which sparks a domi­no effect of unfor­tu­nate events includ­ing being hus­tled by a drug deal­er, crip­pling a bas­ket­ball team and mas­querad­ing as K‑Pop stars.

The Hang­over is an obvi­ous com­par­i­son (both films fea­ture out­ra­geous­ly ill-placed tat­toos), as is Brides­maids – though I would argue that Joy Ride presents less far­ci­cal bitch­i­ness and more real­is­tic acid notes that exist par­tic­u­lar­ly between female friends. But it’s impos­si­ble to ignore the influ­ence of Super­bad on the film. It is, after all, pro­duced by Seth Rogan and Evan Gold­berg and there is clear­ly a par­al­lel Seth, Evan and Fogel in Lolo (who makes art with dicks), Audrey (high­ly strung and secret­ly plan­ning to move to LA with Kat) and Dead­eye (odd, but ulti­mate­ly endearing).

Sim­i­lar themes are explored, in terms of how child­hood friend­ships are test­ed by adult­hood, and how acute the fear of los­ing these rela­tion­ships is. This pro­duces enter­tain­ing microag­gres­sions and bit­ter­sweet moments (where­as the film flags when attempt­ing to be overt­ly mov­ing, ham­mer­ing home indi­vid­ual char­ac­ters’ self-dis­cov­ery), enriched by the added com­plex­i­ty of the gang’s Asian-Amer­i­can iden­ti­ties and places with­in their fam­i­lies. The near-roman­tic jeal­ousy between long-time friends, and the excru­ci­at­ing but some­times reward­ing dif­fi­cul­ty of intro­duc­ing con­trast­ing friends to one anoth­er, are explored to squirm-induc­ing­ly fun­ny effect.

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