Writer-producer Adele Lim, who worked on the script for Crazy Rich Asians, now makes her feature directing debut with this likable and brash Asian-American comedy about four women leaving the US for a trip to the Chinese homeland; they come to terms with their roots in various ways, expressing sexualities queer and straight and of course celebrating friendship.
It all barrels along, with a journey-of-discovery narrative template not entirely dissimilar to the recent Book Club sequel; the energy levels are high and there are some outrageous gags, between which the mandatory sentimentality is reasonably managed although occasionally the sex-positivity theme is rather earnestly signalled. And given how contemporary and hip the script is striving to be, and the fact that it’s specifically about four American nationals flying to China, the lack of any mention of the recent Covid lockdown and diplomatic froideur between China and the US is a bit weird. This project could, of course, have originated before the pandemic.
Ashley Park plays Audrey, adopted as a child by a white American couple and now a super-smart overachiever, about to make partner in a very Wasp-y Seattle law firm; the casually racist boss (played by Veep’s Timothy Simons) needs her to negotiate for lucrative work with a Chinese company. Her best friend from girlhood is Lolo (played by comic Sherry Cola), who back in the day beat up racist kids in the playground on Audrey’s behalf and is now a penniless aspiring artist, still fearlessly cracking wise. Audrey takes Lolo on this business trip to Beijing, and they find themselves being accompanied by non-binary mutual acquaintance Deadeye (Sabrina Wu), whose life so far has been lived pretty much online.
Once in the Chinese capital, they look up a friend: Kat (Stephanie Hsu, from Everything Everywhere All at Once) who is now a famous screen actor and engaged to a Christian hunk who doesn’t know about the colourful love life she has enjoyed up until now – believing her to be, like him, a virgin. But Audrey faces a challenge: the Chinese businessman (Ronnie Chieng) she is dealing with is not impressed with her lack of interest in her background, and so Audrey realises that to land the contract she must track down her birth mother.
Like The Farewell and Everything Everywhere All at Once, Joy Ride is very much about family, and about the complicated Asian-American experience of connecting with faraway relatives of whose existence you have been so far hardly aware. Joy Ride delivers mostly through setpieces, and the best is the one in which the four heroines are aboard a Chinese train looking for an empty compartment, or at least one in which the existing occupants look reassuringly respectable. They eagerly settle for one containing a blond white American – only later wondering if there is some internalised bigotry going on – but this woman is not what they think, and triggers a catastrophe which launches the action. A fun ride.
• Joy Ride is released on 6 July in Australia, 7 July in the US and on 4 August in the UK.
