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Joy Ride centres around a quartet of female friends, two of whom – Audrey (Ashley Park – Emily In Paris) and Lolo (Sherry Cola) – met as young girls in the park when their parents introduced them to each other, in one of the scant genuinely funny moment in the whole 95 minutes on offer.
Since the former was brought up by white foster parents, and they say something dumb when they’re all having a dinner in the present day, the fact Audrey drops in “White people(!)”, is quite a racist statement to make and really shows what a lazy script you have to look forward to. Imagine trying it the other way round…
The script problems also continue with having everyone always being awkward around them, as if they don’t know how to speak to Asian people, which sounds like a very dated concept.
Audrey is the main character of the piece – who wants to meet her birth mother – so it’s off for a trip to China, for the four of them – with Lolo wanting to create a line of equivalent toys to Lucky Cat, in “Licky Cat”, Kat (Stephanie Hsu – Everything Everywhere All At Once) being an actress, and Deadeye (Sabrina Wu) just tagging along to make up the numbers, as a character who looks like a badly-written stereotype mixing an undefined LGBTQ+ status with autism.
Because reasons, Audrey’s also planning to complete a business deal at the same time, yet has zero Chinese language skills, and as shown in the trailer, to get on a plane at one point, they have to pretend to be a famous K-Pop group, all of which apparently is made up on the spot. It was a much shorter and effective scene in the trailer, yet here, is quite drawn out.
To add to the problems, Joy Ride also features lots of coarse humour and lazy ‘friends stick together’ schtick. However, it gets worse when they end up involved in a huge stash of drugs and have to resolve that issue, the result being monumentally stupid. Audrey is meant to be a high-flying lawyer, so she acts completely out of character for someone who’s apparently intelligent.
There’s also a ridiculous scene for one character involving a threesome… and there’s not a single straight man in the world who’d want to get in with that unless there’s at least two women present!
Still, at least it wasn’t Elemental.
Joy Ride is in cinemas from August 4th, and isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 95 minutes
Release date: August 4th 2023
Studio: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International
Format: 2.39:1 (ARRIRAW (4.5K))
Cinema: Cineworld Didsbury
Rating: 5/10
Directors: Adele Lim
Producers: Cherry Chevapravatdumrong, Josh Fagen, Evan Goldberg, Teresa Hsiao, Adele Lim, Seth Rogen, James Weaver
Screenplay: Cherry Chevapravatdumrong, Teresa Hsiao
Music: Nathan Matthew David
Cast:
Audrey: Ashley Park
Lolo: Sherry Cola
Deadeye: Sabrina Wu
Kat: Stephanie Hsu
Dae: Daniel Dae Kim
Jenny Chen: Debbie Fan
Wey Chen: Kenneth Liu
Mary Sullivan: Annie Mumolo
Joe Sullivan: David Denman
Young Lolo (age 5): Belle Zhang
Young Audrey (age 5): Lennon Yee
White Boy: Kellen Bruce
Swinging Kid: Kalayna Kozak
Audrey (age 12): Isla Rose Hall
Lolo (age 12): Chloe Pun
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.