Road Trip is a mostly agreeable, by-the-numbers
teen flick with a handful of inspired sequences, most of them involving
MTV's resident disturbed soul, Tom Green. It concerns a sleepy University of
Ithaca student named Josh (Breckin Meyer) who accidentally mails a video of
his sexual encounter with an infatuation (Amy Smart) to his longtime
girlfriend (Rachel Blanchard), who's seemingly avoiding him while at school
in Austin, Texas. Naturally, he recruits some buddies--Seann William Scott
as the lech, D.J. Qualls as the hopeless nerd, and Paulo Costanzo as the
doper genius--to hit the open highway and intercept the package. Even more
naturally, mayhem ensues: A car explodes, a bus is stolen, a nerd is
deflowered, French toast is horribly violated, and an elderly man bogarts
both pot and Viagra.
The film's humor is more democratic than politically correct, as
everyone--women and minority characters, not just the hipster white
guys--have a hand in the high jinks. Green plays Barry Manilow (no, not that
one), a professional student (eight years and counting)--he relates the
film's story to skeptical prospective students while leading them on a tour
of the college--and thrill-seeking dork extraordinaire. In particular, in an
already justly famous sequence of scenes, he sadistically anticipates and
endeavors to accelerate a mouse's demise at the jaws of a python. It's very
much in the vein of American Pie, perhaps a smidgen tamer, but at
least its characters don't really learn any dopey lessons in the end.
Director and coscreenwriter Todd Phillips, who earlier made the
much-questioned documentary Frat House, again proves he's more adept
at staging fictional comic sequences than real ones. --David Kronke