Bad Trip (2021)
Directed by Kitao Sakurai
In this hidden-camera prank comedy, two best friends bond on a wild road trip to New York as they pull real people into their raunchy, raucous antics.
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What critics compared Bad Trip to
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
Directed by Larry Charles
Themes
I’ve always enjoyed public-prank films; pop-culture effective Borat and the recent sequel reminded us how teasing the unaware is absurdly fun.
You pretty much get what you expect in this compendium of low-brow pranks that combines Jackass with Borat .
The reason Bad Trip waffles so drastically between painful and thrilling is that it basically combines execrable Improv Everywhere-style stunts, in which performers assault people just trying to live their lives with hokey shtick, and Borat -style stunts, in which the performer is a wild card clown making a surreal spectacle of themselves in front of those same normal people — often playing on their prejudices and expectations of what that clown is meant to represent in the process (Borat was using people’s assumptions about the “backward former Eastern Bloc” to explore their own cultural blindspots and stock prejudices).
There's also nothing that's so outlandish that you'll find yourself talking about it afterwards, such as the astonishing Rudy Giuliani interview in the much-superior Borat Subsequent Moviefilm .
Pranks have evolved from “Jackass” to “Borat,” “Punk’d” to “Impractical Jokers.”
Strangely, the film goes to great lengths to reference the Wayans Brothers’ “White Chicks” (2004).
And then there’s the pals’ recreation (in front of real people at a charity reception) of “White Chicks,” made up and dressed up like Shawn and Marlon Wayans in that black-men-as-white-women comedy, remembering to “think white thoughts” and starting conversations with the unsuspecting patrons of this gala with “I’m going to see Megyn Kelly give a TED Talk later.”