When I say Joy Ride is the kind of movie that has the potential to leave you screaming, crying and throwing up, I mean it. The comedy from writer/director Adele Lim (who co-wrote Crazy Rich Asians) is an unapologetic, wonderful, and unique road trip comedy that’s full of heart and humor. With the four fully committed performances from Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, Stephanie Hsu and Sabrina Wu and a simultaneously heartfelt and raunchy script, this is the kind of movie that made me laugh until I cried and left me with my jaw on the floor. It also had me beaming with joy from the first frames to the moment the credits started to roll.
Release Date: July 7, 2023
Directed By: Adele Lim
Written By: Adele Lim, Cherry Chevapravatdumrong, Teresa Hsiao
Starring: Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, Stephanie Hsu, Sabrina Wu
Rating: R for strong and crude sexual content, language throughout, drug content and brief graphic nudity
Runtime: 95 minutes
Joy Ride follows Audrey (Ashley Park), a lawyer living in Seattle, as she and her free-spirited childhood bestie Lolo (Sherry Cola) make their way across the Pacific Ocean to China to close a business deal. As they go on this journey, they’re joined by Lolo’s cousin, the lovable Dead Eye (Sabrina Wu), and Audrey’s college friend/sexually repressed actress Kat (Stephanie Hsu).
While overseas, the friends decide to try and find Audrey’s birth mom, the protagonist having been adopted when she was young, and so begins a wild journey that involves a lot of K-Pop, sexual shenanigans, a drug bust, and a whole lot of other tomfoolery that makes for a fun, raunchy comedy.
Joy Ride fully commits to the raunchiness, and it's fantastic because of it.
Completely shameless and committed to the shocking and hilarious comedy, Ashley Park, Stephanie Hsu, Sherry Cola and Sabrina Wu shine bright when they lean into the outrageousness of the plot. While the performances really sell some of the wild elements of this movie, it's also well-written. Adele Lim and her co-writers made sure to plant details along the way that made the crazy moments of the movie make sense, and that paired with the work of the stars is the primary reason this movie works.
The best aspects of the Joy Ride are on full display when the pals decide to create a K-Pop group called Brownie Tuesday to get past airport security. The scene is hysterical, incredibly dirty and unlike anything I’ve ever seen on screen. You’d think a random music video of a fake girl group performing Cardi B’s “WAP” wouldn’t work, but guess what? It does, and it works so well. It's able to pull this off because the four actors lean into the goofiness.
But while the scene itself is ridiculous, it's also logical within the film. Lim and her co-writers wrote in details early on – like Dead Eye being a huge K-Pop fan and Audrey and Kat’s a cappella background – which made all their actions make sense. It’s important exposition, but it's also never forced; they’re simply silly little details that play a big role later in the movie.
Ashley Park is a powerhouse, and a brilliantly funny straight woman in Joy Ride.
It's been established that Ashley Park is a powerhouse, but now an even bigger audience knows it because of how excellent she is in Joy Ride. A big reason why the outrageous moments don’t feel totally outlandish is that the film is also grounded, and that’s mostly thanks to Park's performance. While Audrey is a lawyer who says on multiple occasions that they need to be “professional” on this trip to China, she’s also wild, sexy and unapologetically herself (all while spending a lot of the movie trying to find herself).
Audrey's journey to find her birth mom is used as the heartbeat of the film, but the character's background is also part of the movie's comedic voice – with jokes about her knowing all the names of the characters on Succession and not loving Chinese food. Meanwhile, this conflict of her not truly understanding where she comes from serves as the dramatic core.
It’s no easy feat to play both sides of this character, and playing the straight man in a comedy always seems like an uphill battle because the character can be perceived as one-dimensional or boring. However, Audrey is neither of those things; she’s a complex, strong, heartfelt and funny woman thanks to Park's terrific performance.
Ashley Park, Stephanie Hsu, Sherry Cola and Sabrina Wu are a perfectly balanced ensemble, which made for a wonderfully chaotic story.
Ashley Park, Stephanie Hsu, Sherry Cola and Sabrina Wu comedically thrive in different ways in Joy Ride, and like their friend group in the movie, it’s their differences that make for a perfectly balanced ensemble. Each character is three-dimensional and the actor playing each one is perfectly cast. When you take four fantastic individuals and put them together, you get magic, and that’s precisely what this ensemble is.
For example, Kate and Lolo have a little feud over who is Audrey’s best friend, and it serves as both a dramatic plot point and a big laugh. This is because both Hsu and Cola have chemistry for days, and they bring their A-games as they both fearlessly play their strong-willed characters.
While the aforementioned “WAP” scene is the biggest example of this ensemble firing on all cylinders, a drug bust on a train is another prime moment that shows off the group's comedic range. While Hsu shows off her physical comedy skills by dealing with the effects of trying to hide drugs up her butt, Cola thrives on quippy (and wildly sexual) ad-libs while gracefully handling her high. Meanwhile, Park’s ability to play a confused woman from both a dramatic and comedic standpoint shines, and Wu absolutely rocks their performance as a fish out of water who will say anything. All of this then comes together to create a balanced ensemble that understands its strengths.
As the title suggests, this raunchy comedy is a wild and joyful trip. While it will likely be compared to other films in this genre, like Bridesmaids and The Hangover, Joy Ride has its own voice, which is why the film thrives on so many levels. At its core, Adele Lim's directorial debut is a gorgeous and heartfelt story of a woman finding herself, and along the way, she and her friends get into some shenanigans that will leave you laughing, crying and smiling from ear to ear as you walk out of the theater.
