Review: Road Trip

I went to this film knowing practically nothing about it apart from the title and the fact that I saw Tom Green on the poster. For those of you who are MTV-illiterate, Tom Green is the absolutely crazy presenter of "The Tom Green Show" which is like no hosted show you've ever seen before. Ranging from setting himself on the fire in the street to putting a dead cow's head in his parents' bed, Tom is the ultimate reaction seeker and his shows on MTV Dark (late at night!) are always good for a laugh if you like that kind of thing.

Anyway, the first face that appears on screen is Tom who plays an eternal student called Barry [Manilow]. He seems pretty normal as he gives a group a guided tour around his University of Ithaca campus, but as he relates his version of the facts about the college it becomes obvious to the tour group and to us that he doesn't have a clue about the place. They complain to him that it's the worst tour they've ever been on and probably the worst college they've seen (they've obviously never done a tour of a shopping mall) and he replies that this university was the setting for one of the greatest stories of all time.

[SPOILER]

Of course he then has to tell the story, which revolves around a student called Josh who falls in love with a college girl called Beth even though he has been having a long term long distance relationship with another girl called Tiffany who has moved to Austin, Texas. The basic premise is that Josh has been recording video messsages to post to Tiffany, but a friend of his accidentally mails a sex video of Josh and Beth to Tiffany (who is away for a few days at a relation's funeral). Josh and a couple of buddies have to make a road trip to Austin to retrieve the video before Tiffany returns from the funeral.

The buddies are E.L., played by typecast Seann W. Scott who gets a cheer as soon as he first appears on screen [no doubt from those remembering him as Stifler from "American Pie" or more recently Billy from "Final Destination"], and Rubin, a regular pot-smoker with a pet snake. They persuade a mild-mannered skinny geek called Kyle to drive them in his dad's Ford Taurus.

Buddy Barry Manilow (Tom Green) is left in charge of Rubin's pet snake and is supposed to feed it a mouse every few days - we have some hilarious scenes with Barry showing the non-hungry snake exactly how to eat the mouse, and eventually getting into a fight with the snake.

Meanwhile, the journey is going so terribly wrong for the main characters that it looks like there's no hope of things ever righting themselves. The buddies total the car after a 'Dukes of Hazzard' style ravine jump and then run out of money less than halfway through the trip. But I'll leave it at that and ruin no more, I'll just say there's plenty more memorable moments to enjoy: the viagra-taking grandpa, the mistaken identity incident in Boston, E.L.'s sperm donation, and the over-romantic tour guide.

Fans of American Pie will love this teen flick, and I can honestly say that I laughed most of the way through the film. It could have done with some more of Tom Green's mad antics, but I'm sure we'll see more of that on the big screen in the future.

**1/2