So the story with the movie The Trip is that it began its existence as a six-part TV show in the UK called The Trip. At some point it was cut down to it's current length of 107 minutes and was released as a feature film. What we have now is a very funny mocu-comedy with no structure that runs a bit too long... because it's really just too short.
The story is that Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon (if you haven't watched BBC-America or small Brit comedies, you won't know them) go on a trip of Northern England to eat at the excellent restaurants, experience the cozy inns and visit the historical sights up there and write about it all for a magazine. The idea was that Coogan would take his American modelesque girlfriend on this trip as a romantic getaway, but because they're on the splits he asked his sometimes-buddy and former colleague Brydon to join him. It's shot like a mocu-comedy - which is to say it's basically a narrative story shot like a documentary (of course, a comedy not a drama).
Along the way the two annoy one another (and us) constantly. Coogan is totally self-absorbed, sad about his love life and the direction of his career and upset that he's not fucking his girlfriend nightly; Brydon does impressions non-stop (he particularly loves Sean Connery, Michael Caine and Hugh Grant), has a pretty great life and is basically a nice guy... aside from the incessant annoying impressions.
This is a comedy along the lines of the uncomfortable situational things like The Office that are popular in the US and UK now. If you hate uncomfortable silences, nonstop inane blather and don't know every movie that's been released in the past 15 years, you might not like this.
The biggest problem, of course, is that it really should be a 90-minute movie, if it's not a 6-part TV show. It moves along with no real structure and no sense of where they're going or how long it will take (implied internal time flow of a movie should not be underestimated). I happen to really like that just about every night Coogan has a sad reflective moment where he realizes he's not very happy (I like tension like that in a comedy), but it's utterly unnecessary in the context of this film, if it's not going to be played out longer. It would be a good aggregate 20 minutes that could be further cut out.
I am really interested to see the TV show now. What's good in the cut movie version is really enjoyable and very funny and I'm sure that the 65 minutes that was cut out is just as good.
Stars: 3 of 4
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