Movie Reviews: ‘Joy Ride’, ‘The Lesson’, ‘This Place’
JOY RIDE: 3 ½ STARS
‘Joy Ride’, a new comedy starring Ashley Park and Sherry Cola in theaters now, is a raunchy road trip movie that pushes the boundaries of both its humor and its exploration of family and platonic love.
According to Audrey (Park), she and Lolo (Cola) became friends because they were “the only two Asian girls” in their Washington state suburb. Fast friends from the playground to adulthood, they are a great example of how opposites attract. Audrey is a career-obsessed corporate lawyer on her way to becoming a partner at her firm, while Lolo is an irreverent free spirit trying to make it as an artist.
When Audrey’s firm sends her on a business trip to China to make a deal with millionaire Chao (Ronny Chieng), Lolo comes along as a translator and troublemaker.
“Best friends trip,” she calls. “This is going to be iconic.”
Rounding out the crew are Lolo’s eccentric cousin Deadeye (Sabrina Wu) and Audrey’s BFF Kat (“Everything Everywhere All at Once’s” Stephanie Hsu) who is now a television star in Beijing. It’s an awkward group. Deadeye is in their own world and Lolo and Kat are constantly mocking each other.
On the floor in Beijing, Audrey and her team meet Chao at a crowded nightclub for a night of excessive drinking, eating, and playing a slapping game that is as painful as it is ridiculous.
“I’ve heard that if you keep up with Chinese business people,” says Lolo as a new tray of shots comes onto the table, “they respect you more.”
The night gets serious when Chao says he wants to meet Audrey’s family.
“How are we supposed to do business together if we don’t know each other’s families?” he asks. The problem is that Audrey, although born in China, was adopted as a child and raised in America by a white family.
Turns out Lolo, who always thought Audrey had to track down her birth mother, has already done some research and discovered that the mother lives an hour and a half away. When Chao insists on meeting her, Audrey and company embark on a wild journey of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll (okay, make that K-Pop) to reunite mother and daughter.
“Joy Ride” is explicit and emotional. Audrey and her friends experience a comedy of errors: they become reluctant drug runners, run amok in a hotel full of professional basketball players, and stage a violent remake of Cardi B’s “WAP” with an unexpected revelation. raunch are heartfelt messages of identity and belonging that prevent the film from feeling like a series of outrageous set pieces strung together. The whole thing is bound by the genuine chemistry of the cast, a kind of “bridesmaid” bond that allows for the film’s wild shifts in tone.
Audrey’s search for identity and self-discovery as an Asian adoptee living in America is at the heart of the story. Her coming of age in China brings with it an introspection unusual in hard-R comedies.
“Joy Ride” is a culturally specific story that breaks stereotypes with vagina tattoos and universal messages of self-worth, renewal and the importance of companionship.
THE LESSON: 3 ½ STARS
A chamber music piece set against a backdrop of the literary world, ‘The Lesson’, now playing in theatres, is a fabulously twisty noirish study of betrayal and revenge.
Liam Sommers (Daryl McCormack) is an aspiring author fresh out of college who lands a comfortable job as a live-in tutor for his idol, the fabulously wealthy JM Sinclair (Richard E. Grant), the country’s most respected author. , which also happens to be the subject of Liam’s dissertation.
“I’m sure he’d be flattered,” Sinclair’s brooding wife, art dealer Hélène (Julie Delpy) tells Liam, “but you’re not here for him.”
“Good writers borrow,” says Sinclair, “but great writers steal,” and Sinclair is a great writer.
Recovering from losing his eldest son Felix to suicide two years earlier, the reclusive author has brought in Liam to help prepare his other son, a brat named Bertie (Stephen McMillan), for his Oxford entrance exam.
“He needs to go in, Liam,” Hélène says.
Upon arrival, Liam discovers that, despite seeming to have it all – think Downton Abbey with fewer servants – the family is missing one crucial thing: happiness. Kept under the thumb by the selfish Sinclair, whom Bertie describes as “indifferent and cruel,” an atmosphere of tension hangs over the house like a shroud.
When Sinclair agrees to read Liam’s work-in-progress novel in exchange for the author’s ambitious, but unpublished, take on his latest book – “The Ending, Part III? It Feels Like Another Novel”, says Liam – begins a series of events that reveal the main themes of the film: inspiration, ethics and revenge.
The dark comedy “The Lesson” succeeds not because of its meaty story, which is a little down-and-dirty fun, but because of the way the actors inhabit their characters. Grant and Delpy are perfectly cast as a couple who chose cruelty over love many years ago.
Grant embraces Sinclair’s technical persona, never trying to make him likeable. It is a bravura performance dripping with superiority, intellect and scorn. Sinclair knows his place in the world and is willing to do almost anything to stay there.
Delpy is a slightly more sympathetic character who lets the strange feeling, other than contempt, bleed through her icy facade. Her misery is clear, she has lost her son and more, but there is something more behind her understated disguise.
However, it is McCormack who grounds the imagination with a very real performance fueled by ambition, which prevents “The Lesson” from becoming too arcane, too aware of its excesses.
“The Lesson” is a slow burn, a story that unfolds at its own pace with humor, theatrical brutality and welcome surprises.
THIS PLACE: 2 ½ STARS
In This Place, a new coming-of-adulthood movie now in theaters, Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs and Priya Guns play two young women who must explore their past to understand their present.
Jacobs (who also co-wrote and co-executive produced) plays Kawenniióhstha, a half-Mohawk, aspiring poet from Montreal who moves to Toronto to attend college and locate – and get to know – the Iranian father who left before she was born .
“Can you imagine being okay with being forgotten or unacknowledged?” she asks.
When she leaves her notebook with all her work at a laundromat, it leads to an encounter with Malai (Priya Guns), a Tamil student living with her elder brother Ahrun (Alex Joseph) as she figures out her future.
Sparks fly immediately and their friendship quickly turns into love, but before their relationship can fully blossom, they all have to work through family issues.
When Malai learns that her estranged, alcoholic father (Muraly Srinarayanathas) is dying of cancer, she struggles with how to say goodbye. On the other hand, Kawenniióhstha has to learn to say hello to her father Behrooz (Ali Momen). She learns of the complicated past her parents shared, and her mother’s concern that if the truth about Kawenniióhstha’s father were known, the blood quantum laws would not deem her Mohawk enough to live on the reservation.
As the two refugee daughters grapple with the impact their family ties have on their lives, tension builds in their relationship.
In barely 87 minutes, “This Place” covers a lot of ground. The love story is the starting point when we get to know Kawenniióhstha and Malai, but the film also touches on the generational trauma of genocide, parental expectations and being different.
The love story is heartfelt and has a pleasant intimacy even in its earliest stages, but unfortunately neither character gets the time to fully explore the effects of the film’s themes on their lives. They are not helped by dialogues that are too often stilted and obvious.
“This Place” has a lot to offer. The bond between the main characters feels authentic and their strangeness is accepted and never questioned. But while it falters somewhat in execution, the heart of the film and its messages of love, compassion and understanding never do.
