Movie Review: ‘Joy Ride’

Joy Ride is, well, a joy. The movie is hilarious, well-written, moving, and definitely earns its R-rating (within the first few minutes). Written by Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsaio, both of whom have written for Family Guy, and directed by first-time director and writer Adele Lim, the movie follows four Asian Americans as they journey across China while one of the women seeks career advancement and subsequently searches for her birth mother. Along the journey, the four grow closer while discovering who they truly are and want they really want.

Joy Ride begins with the two main characters, Audrey Sullivan (Ashley Park, Emily in Paris) and Lolo Chen (Sherry Cola, Turning Red), becoming friends as children. Then a montage shows them age (into the actors I listed in the previous sentence) and provides a quick explanation of their characters: Audrey is constantly trying to prove herself worthy and becomes a lawyer while Lolo is the more carefree, struggling artist. After the montage, the journey kicks in when Audrey must go to China to meet with a Chinese businessman (Ronny Chieng, M3GAN’s dead boss). She invites Lolo and Lolo brings her cousin Deadeye (Sabrina Wu) with the (obviously false) promise that the cousin is just joining them for the flight. Once in China, the three meet up with Audrey’s college roommate, Kat (Stephanie Hsu, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) and the quartet proceed together to help Audrey.

By this point, we are already well into the comedy, but some tension and drama start to build as Deadeye is kind of a lonely outcast while Kat and Lolo start feuding over Audrey’s friendship. Not to spoil it too much, but these plot threads do build into some great, albeit slightly predictable, climactic scenes later in the movie. The film takes numerous twists, putting the quartet through various situations that are increasingly jaw dropping. More importantly, I feel, is the twists largely make sense and it doesn’t feel like a bunch of skits tied together with a loose thread. Amongst the nearly non-stop laughter in the audience of the screening I attended were quite a few audible tears. Lim, Chevapravatdumrong, and Hsaio did a fantastic job, along with the cast and crew, creating a universal story about belonging and acceptance of yourself and your loved ones. Joy Ride is much better than the trailers had me expecting.

I will add a few quick content “warnings” (or “promotions” depending on your taste). This movie contains “foul” language (in multiple languages) throughout, discussions/jokes about sex/sexuality, and one quick shot of a woman’s vagina (there is a plot-based reason if that is important). There are a couple cliched “women admiring topless men” scenes and a sex scene that are mostly played for laughs. If any of these bothers you, watch something else. I am not a big fan of plots/jokes involving illegal drugs, but they were written well-enough for this movie to get me laughing. This also contains subtitles for the non-English dialogue.