Joy Ride

A group of Asian-American friends (Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, Stephanie Hsu, Sabrina Wu) go on a trip to China.

Kind of a wacky road-trip version of Return to Seoul¹, in the sense that a large part of the narrative is about reconnecting with lost family.

The more obvious comparison would be to Crazy Rich Asians², which the director of this film Adele Lim wrote. It shares a similar larger than life sense of humour, and also seems to be paid for by a tourist board, but in Joy Ride the mad antics and physical comedy get turned up to 11.

It works reasonably well, with some stand out funny moments being enough to forgive the abundance of annoying try-hard comedy. Yes there’s a scene where they accidentally do drugs, it seems to be obligatory these days.

The four leads are really funny and it’s enjoyable to watch them play off each other. Even when it’s tired old jokes they manage to bring a new take on it.

A glossy, witty and sometimes charmingly chaotic comedy.