‘HOW can this be a movie? It’s just 90 minutes of two guys driving and eating.”
Thus spake my moviegoing pal this week ahead of seeing “The Trip” a new British comedy/road trip buddy movie starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon (as themselves), but 111 minutes later (to be precise), after many hilarious laughs and some biting insight to leaven the whole mix, there was no doubt this was not only a real movie, but one well worth seeing.
One of the movie’s strengths its leanness. Adapted by director Michael Winterbottom from a six part British TV show that aired last autumn – with the best bits left in and the too-England-specific jokes taken out – the opening titles roll as we hear Coogan asking Brydon to join him for a gastronomic jaunt to the north of England, courtesy of the Observer, since Coogan’s girlfriend Mischa is out of the country. Cut to Coogan picking up Brydon in his Range Rover, with time enough to just glimpse Brydon’s domestic bliss with loving wife and almost-newborn baby.
We know almost immediately that Coogan is the bigger star, but one tormented by his lack of success in America, his inability to work with the ‘auteur’ directors whose respect he craves, and his complete failure as both a father and a husband. Like many angry men, he makes himself feel better by withering comparisons with others – in this case Brydon, who remains resolutely cheerful despite the endless series of put-downs and one-ups to which Coogan subjects him over the next few days.
As the pair navigate lonely country lanes amid the desolate late winter scenery of the Lake District, they inevitably look inward inward to philosophize, joust and parry. At a series of posh country inns Coogan is at pains to both get the best room and seduce whatever pretty foreign hotel concierge he can impress with his fame. Meanwhile Brydon focuses his efforts on enjoying some good food (always scallops, apparently), while indulging in some superb impressions of Woody Allen, Sean Connery, and most memorably, Michael Caine. Indeed, the minutes-long duel between the two to see just who ‘does’ Caine better is one of the movie’s funniest sequences. They also eat, of course, often and well, with dishes extravagantly conceptualized and prepared. The movie should certainly put to rest those tired old clichés about there being no decent food outside London.
Interspersed with Coogan’s snide denigration of his friend are some softer moments wherein he reveals his blank confusion at the emotional side of life, fumbling to deal with both his ex wife and his teenage son, for whom the lack of a consistent father figure seems to be leading to trouble. Coogan’s appeal is further enhanced by his obvious intelligence and erudition, waxing lyrical about subjects as diverse as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and limestone rock formations. But just as we might start to like him, Winterbottom takes us to the movie’s climax, a quiet moment in a country graveyard where the pair ruminate on their lives and their legacies, giving Coogan a chance to damn his travelling companion with the most spiteful of faint praise, while fleeing at the prospect of Brydon doing the same in return.
As the pair return to London and Coogan finally allows Brydon to get the better of him – in a singing range dispute, of all things – we get the sense that Coogan is finally developing a little self-knowledge and is perhaps changing as we know he must. In the movie’s coda, while Brydon easily rejoins the cosy bosom of his family, Coogan is left alone in his glorious but sterile bachelor pad, looking out a grimy London landscape, turning down a Hollywood TV series so he can stay in London and raise his son. Perhaps he has come long way, after all.
‘The Trip’
Rating: Not rated (contains adult themes and some sexual content)
Cast: Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Running time: 111 minutes.
