JOY RIDE (2023) - Mark Reviews Movies

Joy Ride, Lionsgate

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 6, 2023

The comedy of Joy Ride feels a bit too calculated for its own good. There are ideas for some potentially funny bits in Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao's screenplay, but too much of the humor feels either familiar or telegraphed in a way that undercuts a sense of spontaneity or surprise to the bigger punch lines. It's trying to be funny, and we can feel that effort.

It's present throughout director Adele Lim's movie, beginning right with the setup. We meet Audrey (Ashley Park) and Lolo (Sherry Cola), the only two kids of Asian descent in the small American town where they grew up together and became the best of friends. This relationship, of course, is in spite of their significant differences in personality.

Audrey, who was adopted from China as a baby by two white parents (played by David Denman and Annie Mumolo), becomes an overachiever, after a childhood of being treated as an "other" on account of her race and being adopted. Meanwhile, Lolo, whose immigrant parents (played by Kenneth Liu and Debbie Fan) own a restaurant, is brasher and far less concerned with what other people think of her. They're a very odd couple of friends, indeed.

The plot revolves around a trip to China, necessitated by a business deal for the law firm where Audrey works. If she pulls off this unclear and clearly plot-driven contract, she will finally make partner at the firm. The problem is, despite telling her boss otherwise, Audrey can't speak any dialect of Chinese, so Lolo will accompany her on the trip to serve as her interpreter.

All of this is in such a rush to get to the plot and the gags that the screenplay barely gives us any time to see and appreciate these characters and their dynamic in anything more significant than broad terms. The same applies to two other characters who join Audrey and Lolo on the trip. One is the latter's cousin, known as Deadeye (Sabrina Wu), who is socially awkward and generally weird, and Deadeye is probably funnier than the character has any right to be, if only because Wu's performance makes this easy stereotype of comic relief into an actual person in between the jokes at the character's expense.

The other is Kat (Stephanie Hsu), Audrey's old college roommate, as well as an actress who moved to China and has found success on a period soap opera there. The foundation of her character has little to do with who she is, a slightly narcissistic performer, and is entirely based on who she isn't.

There's instant conflict between Kat and Lolo, who resents seeing herself in competition to be Audrey's best friend, but there's also the fact that Kat publicly presents herself as a "good, Christian woman," saving herself for her forthcoming marriage to her religious fiancé and co-star Clarence (Desmond Chiam). Audrey knows her former roommate's sexually adventurous history, including a tattoo on a particular part of her body that might have made for more of a payoff if the screenplay didn't go out of its way to introduce it and remind us of it as often as possible.

The four—two of whom are made inherently redundant by the ultimately useless plot—end up on a cross-country adventure of sorts after negotiations with Audrey's local contact (played by Ronny Chieng) stall. He wants to ensure that the woman with whom he's doing business has a connection to China and her family, so thinking she's helping, Lolo lies that Audrey has a relationship with her birth mother. That sends the four on a search for the woman, but even it is mostly an excuse for some wacky shenanigans that often pop out of nowhere, only to be resolved with little effort and quickly forgotten, or, like the taboo tattoo, that are telegraphed early and anticlimactically paid off.

The cast members are obviously having fun, and that energy certainly helps generally for a sense of momentum and specifically during the orchestrated bits of comedy. It's difficult to imagine much, if any, humor coming from a pair of elaborate sequences—one involving the hiding of illicit drugs in assorted places on or within their bodies and another showing a wild night at a hotel—without the actors' enthusiastic investment in them. The gag with the hiding, as well as the sometimes unsuccessful removal of the drugs, at least has the structure of a joke, but the night at the hotel comes across as a hectic montage of several disparate ideas that only reveal a punch line after all the momentum has ceased.

Somewhere in between the chaotic scenes and before the movie's third act decides to take matters far too seriously, there is an amusing and pleasant kind of hang-out story happening in Joy Ride, featuring distinct characters trying to figure themselves out and to get along despite their differences. With this cast, that might have been enough. With these often-strained gags, the actors aren't enough to save this material.

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