Ginger beer foam, anyone?
The Trip is given a wide release this week, fresh from highly acclaimed screenings at the International Film Festival. Those who saw it there will no doubt agree that Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon’s nuanced impersonations of Michael Caine are worth the price of admission alone. Helmed by Michael Winterbottom and practically continuing from Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, this film is a lusciously shot travelogue featuring a romanticised northern England, making fun of our global fascination with gastronomy and masterchefing. A condensed version of the BAFTA award winning television show, The Trip might be a bit heavy-handed with its emphasis on its fictionalized character’s midlife crisis, audiences will nevertheless forgive it for its generous character exposition and its downright funny script.
Wanting to impress his American girlfriend, Coogan accepts a job as a food correspondent for the British Sunday newspaper The Observer. Unfortunately, the girlfriend, who was meant to join Coogan for the gastronomic tour, backs out – forcing him to resort to his final choice, Brydon. The trip takes them to an array of restaurants in northern England with a menu that ranges from the insanely absurd to the mouth watering.
As with A Tristram Shandy, familiarity with English culture is a requisite to fully appreciate the comedy and intertextuality of The Trip. For example, the film channels British romance to emphasize isolation, by setting scenes that inspired nineteenth century novels known for their remoteness, like Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, or just to simply emphasise England’s outstanding landscapes, like the Lake District, that stimulated William Wordsworth’s romantically charged poetry. There’s serious respect for British culture here, and it shows in how its organically interwoven in the script and how wonderfully its been photographed. Nevertheless, the film’s still reasonably accessible, with its most memorable scenes surrounding expertly performed impersonations and incidental visual gags that will please all taste levels.
The Trip doesn’t follow your standard plotline, as it’s literally a series of intertexual characterisations. Such rich material is gold in the hands of Coogan and Brydon – Coogan in the lead role faultlessly embodies an insecure celebrity anxious about everything: from his fading star power to his continuously failing romantic endeavors with women ten to twenty years his junior. Granted, some scenes about his midlife crisis come off heavy handed, notably his almost pathetic lingering looking-at-the-distance shots, but nevertheless, his character development and self-aware comedic style established beforehand is enough to offset it.
Brydon, on the other hand, is the perfect sidekick. He channels the jester whose overstay is counterbalanced by his down to earth appeal. He’s the perfect ‘other’ for Coogan: naive and thick skinned enough to repel Coogan’s sarcasm, causing a lot of hilarity and tragically awkward manifestations of one-upmanship. The Trip is really romantic in all levels: from the unintentional bromance between Coogan and Brydon to the Romantic expression of food as a symbol for relationships. When it comes down to it, all that Coogan wants is a home-cooked meal, something that Brydon has in spades.
I have to admit that the first time I saw Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story – I didn’t like it. And after watching and loving The Trip, my revisit to the former made me a convert. That said; Tristram Shandy is actually a more ambitious film but what’s more appealing about The Trip is that even with Coogan’s celebrity as a main ingredient of his crisis, it’s nevertheless relatable, as it validates traditional values of relationships and family. This is a fun and funny film – and is well worth the trip.
4 Stars
Reynald Castaneda