The Trip (2011)
Directed by Michael Winterbottom
When Steve Coogan is asked by The Observer to tour the country's finest restaurants, he envisions it as the perfect getaway with his beautiful girlfriend. But, when she backs out on him, he has no one to accompany him but his best friend and source of eternal aggravation, Rob Brydon.
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What critics compared The Trip to
From Being John Malkovich to Steve Coogan in The Trip and literally anything starring Jeff Goldblum, presenting the mystery of one’s international appeal through self-referential comedy has produced several fantastic meta-adventures.
At least in this one transcendent moment, the film feels almost like a drama school take on The Trip, only instead of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon trading Michael Caine impressions, it’s Clooney and Crudup having a charming-off.
His 9 Songs , a freewheeling, sexually explicit account of a couple's affair over the course of a year, felt like a fitfully inspired sketch rather than a finished movie, and the same could be said of The Trip, which floats ideas for character arcs (Coogan's compulsion to seduce women, Brydon's inability to speak in his own voice) that never get developed.
He followed “9 Songs” — a grimly pornographic provocation — with the delightfully offbeat “Tristram Shandy” takeoff, “A Cock and Bull Story.”
Everything's a struggle for Steve, who battles cell phone reception trying to reach Mischa (Margo Stilley, "9 Songs") in America.
(The prolific director's varied filmography also includes "24 Hour Party People," about the Manchester rock scene; "A Mighty Heart," with Angelina Jolie; the frankly pornographic "9 Songs"; and a Jim Thompson adaptation, "The Killer Inside Me," to name a few.)
And hey, that’s comedian Rob Brydon as the royal painter (I’ll expect a bit about it in the next installment of “The Trip”).
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Don’t expect the gastronomic wit of Michael Winterbottom’s two versions of The Trip with Steve Coogan and Rob Bryden or the whimsy of Roddy Doyle’s The Van , another food truck folly.
It's a road movie of sorts, like the Steve Coogan/Bob Brydon comedy The Trip , only with fewer expert impressions and more inept executions, but lovely scenery just the same.
Imagine Connery as Finn, or Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, or Pierce Brosnan... (Plus, I kept wondering whether the voice was really Caine, or whether it was supplied by Steve Coogan or Rob Brydon, who give a clinic on how to imitate the great actor in The Trip.) Cars 2 lacks Pixar's normal two-level sophistication, despite attempts to deepen things with a subplot about the folly of relying on fossil fuels.
In the past, Winterbottom and Coogan have collaborated on The Trip movies, improvisational larks that combine the separate appeals of food porn and Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon doing dueling Michael Caine impressions.
Just in case you haven’t gotten enough obvious cinematic critiques of wealth inequality—see Parasite—Michael Winterbottom (24 Hour Party People, The Trip) is here with yet another one.
This will be a disappointment for viewers (like me) who have enjoyed that series of movies called The Trip , in which Winterbottom directs Coogan and fellow comedian, Rob Brydon, playing versions of themselves.
(The duo previously worked together on such successes as The Trip and 24 Hour Party People .)
Coogan starred in Winterbottom's films, "The Trip," and "The Trip to Spain," but "Greed" is about Greece.