Joy Ride
Audrey and Lolo became best friends when they were kids. They lived in a predominantly white town in the Pacific Northwest where there were very few Asian Americans. One day, a school bully threw a racist slur at them on the playground. Audrey watched in awe as Lolo punched him square in the face. From then on, they stuck together through school, careers, and many questionable life choices. Now an ambitious associate at a law firm, Audrey (Ashley Park) has been sent to China by her boss to close a major business deal which could earn her a promotion that would change her life and Lolo (Sherry Cola), Audrey’s much wilder counterpart, tags along for the ride as their translator back to their homeland. With two more friends joining them Deadeye (Sabrina Wu) and Kat (Stephanie Hsu) it becomes a trip of a lifetime that goes dirty and deep on what identity means and how we live true to ourselves.
“Joy Ride,” Adele Lim’s feature debut as director, takes big swings with its brash road trip comedy. It walks fine lines between asking heartfelt questions about belonging and telling outrageous jokes for shock value. It’s almost like Lim and co writers Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao saw the shenanigans of Malcolm D. Lee’s “Girls Trip” as a challenge to beat. And beat it the crew behind “Joy Ride” does when it comes to outrageousness but whether or not it’s as successful will depend entirely upon one’s tolerance for raunchy humor.
Even so, it’s still filled with jokes and flat out funny situations that keep the awkward laughs and full body cringes coming from Audrey trying to find her birth mother, who gave her up for adoption, to hooking up with members of a traveling basketball team. Paul Yee’s cinematography helps create this wild ride of a movie by moving us from Audrey and Lolo’s nondescript hometown to the luridly colorful animated sequences of the group’s K-Pop fantasy number and all the stops along the way, from misty country roads and wide rivers to bustling cafes and dimly lit clubs each scene a rich pause in what is otherwise a breakneck story.
But beyond raunch comedy, “Joy Ride” also pokes fun at Audrey’s identity crisis using it as jumping off point for self-critique and cultural commentary. A particularly sharp moment occurs when Audrey gets played by a white American drug dealer desperate to hide her goods. She trusted her fellow American over other Chinese passengers because she didn’t want to sit next to them; if they had just sat with those people as Lolo puts it, they wouldn’t be in this mess now. There are many little introspective moments throughout the movie like when they land at the Shanghai airport, Audrey notes what a different feeling it is for her no longer being in minority. Many more jokes are observational about missing out on traditional cuisine or speaking the language when you grew up outside that culture. These one liners with deeper truths give some nuance to crude humor about random sex acts or ill advised tattoos.
Like most ensemble movies, its strength lies in its cast led by Ashley Park and Sherry Cola whose characters go through various ups and downs throughout their journey together that forces them both into uncomfortable places but ultimately leads each towards greater self-awareness. Park plays the pitch-perfect straight character (who happens also be high-achiever destined for greatness), Cola’s character is often the instigator of many of the problems in this movie but she does it without malice almost as if she’s eternally optimistic that things will work out best for her. Sabrina Wu’s Deadeye and Stephanie Hsu’s Kat bring even more volatility to mix, as Deadeye’s unpredictability and deadpan expression make it hard for others connect with her while Kat can’t escape her sordid past no matter how hard she tries to change herself (for a Christian fiancé).
Not everything comes together neatly in “Joy Ride,” but the messiness is part of the fun. It’s mostly lighthearted but occasionally profound in what it says about identity and friendships. The stars embrace the outrageousness and allow themselves to behave badly, reveling in each new opportunity for raunch comedy. For all its twists and tangents, “Joy Ride” remains unapologetically itself true to this friendship at its center which sets us off on our merry misadventure.
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