"The Trip"

Image result for the trip reviewIn contrast to Roger Corman’s 1967 freakout, “The Trip,” no hallucinogens are harmed in the Michael Winterbottom comedy of the same title, a British road movie laced with lacerating laughs and starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. Mr. Coogan does, in fact, smoke a joint, lighting up in the same house where Coleridge wrote “Dejection: An Ode” and indulged in opium, the soporific that enslaved him in “humiliation and debasement.” Mr. Coogan has made a career partly by riffing on narcissism and he’s in fine self-loving form, as is Mr. Brydon. For one man, the humiliation of choice here is fame (with a debasement chaser), while for the other it’s his incessant vocal mugging. Both give you a contact high.
Image result for the trip review Image result for the trip review
The duo’s dueling funnymen routine will be familiar if you’ve seen a few of Mr. Winterbottom’s earlier films, including “Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story,” or were in Britain last fall and caught “The Trip” when it was a six-part BBC2 television series. The title, premise and almost everything else in both the big- and small-screen versions are identical because, well, they’re essentially the same, save for the movie’s abbreviated length (111 minutes) and some gags lost in translation. To rewind: Mr. Coogan accepts a gig from The Observer of London to review six restaurants in northern England. He plans to take his (pretend) girlfriend, Mischa (Margo Stilley), but is forced, with demonstrable reluctance, to ask Mr. Brydon instead. Straightaway, the two friendly combatants are motoring out of London in a Range Rover, maps and gags at the ready.
As in many road movies, the trip becomes an occasion for philosophizing, a journey inward and out as the men joust and parry, improvising and entertaining each other, at times by imitating, hilariously, someone else (Michael Caine, Sean Connery). They also eat, of course, often and well, dining in restaurants where the rooms and service are hushed and the dishes extravagantly conceptualized and prepared. (With The Observer paying, money isn’t an issue.) There are gardens of vegetables, oceans of seafood, a veritable abattoir of meat. At the Cumbrian restaurant L’Enclume (one Michelin star), the near-parodic haute and low offerings include lollipops “made out of duck fat with peanuts” (“Why not?” Mr. Coogan muses) and some foamy pea-green ick made from mallow, ginger beer and whiskey and served in a martini glass.
“The consistency,” Mr. Coogan says after braving a sip, “is a bit like snot.” Pause. “But it tastes great.”
In between the truffle ravioli and Burgundy, the vocal caricatures and Lake District landscapes, Mr. Coogan and Mr. Brydon goad each other with prickly jokes and smiled insults all while comparing their successes, reciting poetry and walking the moors, as well as an occasional tightrope. Sometimes the camaraderie edges into aggression that is soon snuffed out with laughter. Mr. Coogan’s stated desire to act for film-art “auteurs,” is one well-chewed bone they tug at, as is Mr. Brydon’s populist appeal. Since they worked with Mr. Winterbottom in his 2002 film “24 Hour Party People,” Mr. Brydon has continued to blow up bigger in Britain, while Mr. Coogan’s Hollywood future has dimmed (his star turn in “Around the World in 80 Days” went nowhere), developments that give “The Trip” a sting of truth.
THE TRIP
Opens on Friday in Manhattan.
Directed by Michael Winterbottom; director of photography, Ben Smithard; edited by Mags Arnold and Paul Monaghan; music by Michael Nyman; produced by Andrew Eaton and Melissa Parmenter; released by IFC Films. Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes. This film is not rated.
WITH: Steve Coogan (Steve), Rob Brydon (Rob), Claire Keelan (Emma), Margo Stilley (Mischa), Rebecca Johnson (Sally), Dolya Gavanski (Magda) and Kerry Shale (Steve’s United States Agent).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Translator Translated" by Anita Desai

Image
Prema Joshi is a “prematurely aged” instructor of English literature at a girls’ college, “a tired woman going home from work with nothing to look forward to, nothing to smile about,” who sees a way out of her malaise when she unexpectedly gets a chance to translate into English a set of short stories written in one of India’s many regional languages. The focus here is the hierarchy that separates writer and translator, with the latter clearly in an inferior position and frustrated by it, and what happens when a translator violates that order. But Ms. Desai also uses the novella for satiric purposes, perhaps to exact vengeance on some literary nationalists in India; at one point Prema and her publisher attend a conference where they are hectored by “a pudgy man in a sweat-stained suit,” who imperiously demands to know, “What made you decide to translate these stories into a colonial language that was responsible for destroying the original language?” ... "Translator Transla...
Read more

"House of Lies"

Image
As pitches go it can't have been an easy one: "So our new show, House of Lies, is about a bunch of cut-throat management consultants and the way in which they con corporate clients out of money each week. As the strapline has it: Meet the One Per Cent sticking it to the One Per Cent. Yes, that's right, it's a half-hour comedy about wealthy slicksters screening right in the middle of one of the biggest economic depressions America has experienced. Good joke, huh?" The answer is er, no, not really. House of Lies, which will air on Sky Atlantic later this year, has many things going for it: an outstanding cast, including the charismatic Don Cheadle as the company's fast-talking boss, Marty Kaan, a devious expert at the art of the soft-sell; some genuinely funny one-liners; slick cinematography and a willingness to take risks with the format (Marty often breaks the fourth wall to explain to the television audience what certain terminology means, or how his ...
Read more

"The World we Found" (by Thrity Umrigar)

Image
A crisis reconnects four young firebrands from college who have grown apart as adults, in a story dense with sensitive scrutiny. Straddling India and the United States, this tale of friends reunited in disparate maturity is heavy on internal reflection, lighter on events. The highpoint of Armaiti, Nishta, Laleh and Kavita’s student years in late-1970s’ Bombay was their involvement in political activity, in particular a demonstration that saw two of them arrested. Now, three decades later, Nishta, renamed Zoha, has spent years in an oppressive marriage to Iqbal, a Muslim who has grown very devout. Impulsive Laleh is comfortably settled with her influential husband Adish and children; architect Kavita has finally come to terms with her lesbianism; and, in America, Armaiti has just been diagnosed with an incurable brain tumor, a catastrophe that pulls the four together again at Armaiti’s request. Laleh and Kavita are free to leave India immediately but Nishta has to be found, persuaded...
Read more