Crammed, heartily, full of sex, drugs and K-pop covers of Cardi B (song title hint: It’s not “Be Careful”), the new comedy “Joy Ride” rivals “Everything Everywhere All at Once” for sheer mania and a can-do spirit of whatever, let’s try this, too!
I tend to like movies that humans, as well as critics, describe as “filthy” whether they love it or hate it or feel in-between about it. I also like it when a brazen comedy doesn’t prioritize playing to the whitest, malest frat-house sensibility possible (aka “The Hangover”). So I’m terminally woke, obviously. It was fun writing for you.
In many ways, I prefer “Joy Ride” to “EEAAO,” this year’s merrily assaultive Oscar winner. Just a few short, long years ago, “Joy Ride’s” simple but sneakily heartfelt good-time mission — showcasing a predominantly Asian American ensemble, ready to rip, with all the right people behind the camera — would’ve been a mission: impossible. But then “Crazy Rich Asians” happened, among others, which was a canny multigenerational hit. Meanwhile, in the R-rated effrontery department, culturally specific Wild Comedies have a wonderful way of getting around just fine with a little marketing behind it.
And here we are. “Joy Ride” arrives courtesy of Seth Rogen’s Point Grey Pictures, with Adele Lim (co-writer of “Crazy Rich Asians” and “Raya and the Last Dragon”) making her feature directorial debut.
“Bridesmaids” serves as one blueprint, in a flexible, use-this-not-that way; “Girls Trip” provides another. Lifelong friends Audrey (Ashley Park) and Lolo (Sherry Cola) grow up together as the two-and-only Chinese girls in a town called White Hills. Years later the adopted Audrey, now a lawyer, is sent to China and if she closes a deal for her firm, she makes partner.
Problem: Her Mandarin is shaky. Solution: Lolo, a sculptor specializing in sex-positive erotic pottery, knows the language and joins Audrey as translator. But because two does not an ensemble spree make, they’re joined by Lolo’s morose, socially maladroit cousin Deadeye (Sabrina Wu, really funny in both deadpan and sudden-rage modes) and by Audrey’s college roommate Kat (Stephanie Hsu), now a popular Chinese soap star.
A drunken nightclub business meeting leads to Audrey having to locate her birth mother, which leads to a run-in with a drug dealer; a meetup, or two, with a traveling basketball team; and a desperate attempt to impersonate a K-pop band. How all this hangs together, when it does hang together, matters less than everything in “Joy Ride” that goes off-plot for a little or a lot of the screen time.
The script by Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao believes in the need for speed: “Joy Ride” is the sort of high-velocity adventure in which one of Audrey’s fellow travelers wonders if Audrey, raised by loving but suuuuuper-white parents, is ever going to sleep with an Asian guy, and roughly 12 seconds later, she’s playing one-on-two with a couple of basketball players. The movie’s good and thirsty, and while many of the jokes push their luck, the movie doesn’t have a mean bone in its body.
Is it for everyone? Who cares? Comedies engineered for every sensibility and sensitivity level have a funny (or, rather, not-funny) way of daring you to guess whether they’re AI-generated. Different as they are from one another, there’s a reason “Bridesmaids” worked, and “Girls Trip” worked and, on a further, more determined shore of raunch, “Joy Ride” works. The on-screen talents, savvy and fine company all, have been ready for something like this far longer than the opportunity has been available.
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'JOY RIDE'
3 stars (out of 4)
MPA rating: R (for strong and crude sexual content, language throughout, drug content and brief graphic nudity)
Running time: 1:35
How to watch: In theaters Friday
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