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Joy Ride Movie Review

Joy Ride is a 2023 comedy film directed by Adele Lim and starring Ashley Park among others. It’s a clichéd, but fun and often funny flick.

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“At least she’s not Japanese“

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It 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 China in search of one of their birth mothers. This is your standard gross-out comedy that is reminiscent of many similar flicks starring Seth Rogen back in the 2000s. He produced the movie fittingly enough.

The point here is that women can be just as funny as men in this type of a comedy, and although they are definitely very good, the movie itself is too familiar and too clichéd, which was disappointing as these actresses deserved better. There is a particularly frustrating third act here that follows that annoying comedy structural trope of the group breaking up due to an argument, learning to become better people and eventually making up. It’s an overly dramatic and boring section in an otherwise fun and energetic flick.

The humor here is surprisingly strong at times. There is a mixture of painfully unfunny and/or cringe-worthy moments in this film and genuinely memorable, well executed and smart jokes that really worked. All of the racial politics made for a frustrating commentary that is familiar and too much activist-sounding in jargon, but the more clever scenes actually worked. Those include a K-pop scene that was hilariously put together, the moments with the Chinese family and sex scenes that were raunchy, but amusing. The movie is quite risqué at times, but more often than not it was mixed with a lot of genuinely sweet moments of friendship.

Ashley Park is excellent in the most serious role of the bunch. We’ve seen this arc of a businesswoman learning to let loose before many times, but she was still a lot of fun and that side plot where she learns about her now diseased biological mother was surprisingly heartfelt. Sherry Cola is also a lot of fun as the main character’s best friend and the two share a great dynamic. Stephanie Hsu is actually quite funny as this woman who’s had a very active sex life, but is now trying to be the opposite for her boyfriend. I just wished that they did not include so many of those dumb vagina jokes with her. Sabrina Wu as Deadeye is at first annoyingly one-note, but then she gets to be a three-dimensional character who has a lot of heart.

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Joy Ride is at its best when focusing on the friendship between the four leads and their crazy adventures. The road trip elements were excellent. The men were sidelined here, but the women were all very well developed and quite memorable with all of them getting to be funny most of the time. The dialogue ranges from insightful and witty to cringey and on-the-nose. The structure is terribly clichéd, but at least the flick moves in a brisk pace and it’s genuinely well acted and featuring some solid production design, though it being obviously not shot in China was frustrating.