Joy Ride

This R-rated comedy has some interesting things to say about friendship and heritage, but it also doesn’t allow its message to get in the way of its outrageous and crude comedy either.

Premise:  Audrey Sullivan (Ashley Park), the adopted Chinese child of white parents, struggles with her sense of cultural identity despite a successful career as a lawyer – so when the opportunity for a business trip to China presents itself, she seizes the chance to reconnect with her roots.  She brings her childhood friend, Lolo Chen (Sherry Cola), with her for moral support, and also arranges to meet up with her former college roommate Kat Huang (Stephanie Hsu), who’s now a successful actress in China.  But Lolo’s decision to also invite her K-pop obsessed cousin “Deadeye” (Sabrina Wu), and her attempts to persuade Audrey to try to find her birth mother, threaten to derail the trip.

Review:

Joy Ride is the type of film that will (unfortunately) get dismissed by many as being either only for women or only for an Asian audience, which is the type of reductive logic that sadly is still prevalent in Hollywood.  The truth is, Joy Ride is a raunchy, risqué, R-rated comedy that should appeal to anyone who enjoys those kind of comedies – but the film has more than just one string to its bow, as it also has something to offer viewers looking for a little more depth and character.

Ashley Park plays the most grounded of the four main characters, and brings real humanity to her feelings of disconnection and isolation as Audrey struggles to find her own cultural identity.  Ashley Park’s performance is really the emotional heart of the movie – but the other characters all have a chance as well to be something more than just a comedy caricature.

“…Stephanie Hsu is arguably responsible for some of the film’s biggest laughs…”

Stephanie Hsu’s Kat appears to have it all – a successful acting career in China, and a romance with her heartthrob co-star – but she’s also having to hide her sexually promiscuous past from her devoutly Christian fiancé.  Stephanie Hsu (who was fantastic in Everything Everywhere All At Once) is arguably responsible for some of the film’s biggest laughs, as her carefully constructed persona is gradually broken down.

Sherry Cola and Sabrina Wu play the more overtly comedic roles, with Lolo’s lack of boundaries responsible for many of the group’s misadventures, while Deadeye’s social awkwardness and obsession with K-pop fan sites are also played for laughs.  But the film still finds time to give each of them a satisfying sub-plot and meaningful character growth of their own, so they’re not merely comic relief.

“…the humour is certainly no-holds-barred…”

This is Adele Lim’s directorial debut, not that you’d know it to watch the film, as she handles all of comedy set-pieces deftly, whether they involve sex-acts with a basketball team, or an unexpected encounter with a drug dealer.  The humour is certainly no-holds-barred, and should appeal to audiences who enjoyed the excesses of something like The Hangover, as well as those who enjoyed the more poignant humour of something like Bridesmaids.

All in all, the humour does rely quite heavily on shock value (I’m not sure how well some of the jokes would stand up to repeat viewings), and as good as the character work is, the third act does (perhaps inevitably) bring things to a fairly predictable and conventional conclusion – but this is still a comedy that deserves to find a much larger audience that it has done so far.