Director: Adele Lim
Writers: Cherry Chevapravatdumrong, Teresa Hsiao
Stars: Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, Stephanie Hsu, Sabrina Wu
Synopsis: Follows four Asian-American friends as they bond and discover the truth of what it means to know and love who you are, while they travel through Asia in search of one of their birth mothers.
With Jennifer Lawrence bringing the capital “R” back to “raunchy” in No Hard Feelings, coming out this Friday, this summer promises to be the return of the female R-rated driven comedy. That’s because the year’s funniest comedy comes only a few weeks later: Adele Lim’s Joy Ride! An uproarious, gut-busting, laugh-out-loud comedy that knows how to push the envelope of a conventional road trip comedy to its limits. Then, somewhat unexpectedly, locating a poignant theme of identity in the middle of such wild debauchery to tie everything together.
The story follows Audrey (Ashley Park), a kick-ass lawyer crushing the competition in a middle-aged white man’s world. Audrey has racked up over 3,000 billable hours, a statistic important in her uber politically correct sensitive boss (Timothy Simmons), who thinks a promotion is in order, which means a move to Los Angeles. A goal and career-oriented professional, a career move of this magnitude has always been her dream. The problem is Audrey doesn’t know how to tell Lolo (Sherry Cola), a free spirit and emerging “positive body image artist” (which amounts to creating miniature playground equipment in the shape of male and female sexual organs), who happens to be her best friend since they were in grade school, bonded by their Chinese heritage.
However, Audrey was adopted by Caucasian parents and has never learned to speak fluent Chinese or Mandarin. So, to close a deal on the business trip that will seal her promotion, Audrey brings Lolo along to be her translator. Everything seems to be going to plan until Lolo drops the news that she’s bringing her anomalous cousin, “Deadeye” (Sabrina Wu), a chronically online socially awkward BTS-head who joins them on their adventure. Along with the help of Audrey’s college roommate, Kate (Stephanie Hsu), a streaming soap star who doubles as a hot mess of a born-again Christian, tags along to charm Audrey’s potential new clients. Unfortunately, the potential clients refuse to sign on the dotted line because Audrey is unaware of where she comes from. The group then embarks on a road trip to locate Audrey’s birth mother and search for the identity that was left behind for her.
Joy Ride is Lim’s first feature film behind the camera, after writing the screenplays of such wonderful films as Crazy Rich Asians and the animated movie Raya and the Last Dragon. Here, scribes Cherry Chevapravatdumrong (Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens) and Teresa Hsiao (Fresh Off the Boat) work with her story treatment to create one of the year’s funniest films. I’m not sure we’ve seen a film push the envelope this far without tearing it apart since the Farrelly brothers’ comedies of the ’90s. The script is an eccentric mix of hard R-rated (Lolo), nonsensical (Wu), and even some cringe (Hsu) comedy concepts that blend famously. Including an eye-opening, jaw-dropping, raunchy comedic sex scene(s) involving all the characters that will go down as one of the raciest yet most hilarious in movie history.
While the writing is very funny and instigates some genuine belly laughs, those lines and gags are brought to life by a fantastic cast. For me, the film’s best jokes come from the amusing Wu, whose naïve, oddball, yet empathetic performance has a direct line to my funny bone and even my heart. Hsu, last year’s Academy Award nominee, has the film’s funniest scene—which brings new meaning to the phrase, “You don’t stare the devil in the eyes and come out without some of his sins”—which will probably elicit more audible gasps than laughs initially. Still, you’ve never seen anything like it. Cola, who you will see later this year in the awkwardly charming Sundance favorite Shortcomings, is Joy Ride’s wildcard yet strangely grounded best friend because she has a self-awareness that’s out of place in the group, never pretending to be anything she’s not.
Then you have Tony Award nominee Ashley Park, who starts as a straight woman, then gets to let loose as the film goes along and does a little bit of everything in the comedy. I’m not sure just anyone can show the range she has here, delivering the film’s most poignant moments while making the consumption of pounds of blow, pills, and other drug paraphernalia in the strangest of places to when being unexpected drug mules was thrust upon her, like a legend, but Park does—as I said, utterly delightful, laugh-out-loud, dirty debauchery.
Finally, at the core of the film is Audrey’s identity. To understand the themes the film touches upon, albeit incredibly briefly at times, you should check out the Amanda Lipitz Netflix documentary Found. That film follows four Chinese girls who were adopted and brought to the United States, embarking on a journey back to China in search of their cultural identity. This encompasses Audrey and is used to drive the story. Not only does it allow very funny situations to continuously top each other, which can obviously be illogical and unbelievable at times, but it also helps give the outrageous comedy an emotional connection that makes at least one of the characters three-dimensional and provides the viewer with something to hang their hat on. Yes, the film has heart, but let’s make no mistake, Joy Ride is the best R-rated comedy since, well, No Hard Feelings. However, as comedies go, Adele Lim’s road trip movie will have a hard time giving up the “funniest film of the year” accolade stamp that most critics and fans will indeed embrace. Even when some of the jokes do not work, Joy Ride unapologetically goes beyond the limits of your typical comedy, uninhibited and without regrets.
