Joy Ride

Sabrina Wu as Deadeye, Ashley Park as Audrey, Sherry Cola as Lolo, and Stephanie Hsu as Kat in Joy Ride. Photo Credit: Ed Araquel

A year ago we had an Irish film of a similar name with Olivia Colman.  This couldn’t be much different.  Directorial debut by Adele Lim who scripted Crazy Rich Asians this has much the same mood and involves a road trip to China and Korea by 4 female friends. Audrey (Ashley Park) is a hotshot lawyer who was adopted by white parents from China as a child.  Now, she is returning for the first time for business.  Lolo (Sherry Cola) is her childhood friend accompanying her.  They will meet up with Kat (Stephanie Hsu) who is a star actress now in China and the fourth and incongruous member of the group is Deadeye (Sabrina Wu). In the rather far-fetched script Audrey has to prove her Chinese heritage to win a contract so she sets off to find her birth mother.  

On a train they end up nearly getting busted for drugs, get rescued in the wilderness by a basketball team they then proceed to bed, Audrey gets fired, they pretend to be a K-Pop band and finally Audrey finds family of sorts in Korea.  A final scene back in the USA shows how they move on from all this a year later.

Joy Ride. Photo Credit: Ed Araquel

What works here?  It’s a pacy movie full of jokes, which are not all funny but do raise a laugh on many occasions.  The actresses are natural comedians and it is a joy to watch the way they act.  Parks surprised me with her versatility and Cola was a star in Shortcomings.  Their energy is also vital to help us believe all the implausible plot twists such as becoming a K-Pop band called Brown Tuesday. 

You may not be so keen on the scatological references, the pussy numbers (Cardi B and other musical influences are found here) and some of the Asian jokes seem more like a clichéd stand-up comedy routine than anything else.  And of course it is good to see a comedy propelled by Asian women showing it can stand up against the best.

3 stars plus

Everything everywhere all at once

One of the hits of the season and you can see why.  Not sure of my final verdict on it and probably will need to watch it again but it has plenty of plus points.

Everything… is a concoction of science fiction, comedy, family relationships and features a largely Asian cast in the front line, though it is set in California.  Evelyn Wang runs a laundromat and has serious problems with the IRS.  Her daughter has just come out as lesbian and Evelyn can’t bring to tell her own father this news. 

 Meanwhile, her husband wants a divorce.  

As they have a frustrating meeting with the zealous IRS officer Deirdre, hubby incites Evelyn to reclaim some of her warrior skills from another life (past or parallel)  and off we go.  

The rest of the film is a romp through different versions of Evelyn to help her not only defeat the IRS but also learn how to handle her daughter and deal with some of life’s challenges.  

In some ways it is a constant bombardment of images and ideas and can be a little hard to follow but as we near the end we see how Evelyn has changed her view on life.   The somewhat messy and constant changing of universes may play against the film in parts but its so creative and different that we can forgive much of this.

Michelle Yeoh anchors the main role and is sublime.  There are throwbacks to her Crouching Tiger and Bond days.  She is well supported by Stephanie Hsu as her daughter and there are some wonderful interventions by an unrecognizable Jamie Lee Curtis as Deirdre.  

Great editing and plenty of humorous touches both visually and verbally.

Overall, my feeling so far towards this is to admire the efforts of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert in creating this engaging film.  Not so sure I really loved it but I do feel it has raised the bar for this type of movie and blended aspects of social commentary with humour and the multiverse theme.

4 stars plus