It’s going to be hard to sell The Trip to a certain segment of the filmgoing audience, as it’s little more than two men traveling around the Northern England countryside, trying fancy foods, and having conversations. Other than that there’s really no plot, or conflict, or story to speak of. If you replace the Northern England setting with the Napa Valley, and the fancy foods with fancy wines, then you pretty much have Alexander Payne’s movie Sideways; which I think a lot of people will probably mention when writing about this film. It’s a strong comparison, and a pretty good barometer to use when deciding whether or not to recommend this one to somebody. If you were able to get through that movie without being bored, maybe you’re able to move onto the more bleak and fog-filled English version of it. If watching a couple of guys travel through the countryside and imbibe wasn’t your cup of tea there, it probably won’t be here either. The two films aren’t exactly analogous though. I thought that Sideways defined its characters more immediately and more as broad personalities. Much of the humor there came from developing an Odd Couple relationship and watching them annoy each other. The Trip is subtler. We’re not shown who the characters are right away; we get to know them over the course of the film. And the dialogue is more pointedly jokey, in Sideways there were humorous situations, but here the conversations largely happen just to make us laugh.
The two men on this trip are actors Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. They’re maybe playing themselves, they’re certainly playing characters who have their real names, and I suppose how much of their portrayals are real and how much of it is dramatized for this film doesn’t really matter. But it should be noted that there is no credited screenwriter. It can then be assumed that most of the dialogue in this film was improvised on location. And certainly, after watching it, that sounds believable. The comedy here doesn’t come from what they’re saying. The words coming out of Coogan and Brydon’s mouth aren’t what’s going to get you; this movie is purely about performance, purely about comedic timing. These two performers have an easy chemistry and they’re relying on it to carry their interactions and keep your interest. The difference between the two men comes from Coogan’s sense of longing and ambition, and how it looks when placed next to Brydon’s contentment and complacency. Both men started off as comedians, impressionists, and while Brydon has settled into that role and is comfortable with the living and modest fame that it has brought him, Coogan has loftier ambitions. He sees himself standing shoulder to shoulder with the greatest actors of this generation and generations past. Brydon has a wife and new baby that he’s anxious to get home to, Coogan has an ex wife, a son who he is distant from, and a current girlfriend that he is on a break with. Brydon is content to spend his evenings having lame, ironic phone sex with his wife. Coogan predatorily goes after whatever female is available; whether it be hotel employee, freelance photographer, or what have you. What little conflict the film is able to muster comes from the sadness of Coogan’s reaching out into nothing and getting no connection in return.
Watching him blatantly proposition the females who travel through this film is a sleazy, uncomfortable experience. Coogan comes on strong, and tries to rely on his fame to get the girl to acquiesce to his advances. Sometimes it seems to work, and others not so much, but we never get a sense that these late night trysts accomplish anything. The sadness of Coogan’s life is even clearer in the scenes where he has cell phone conversations with his girlfriend and family. Ironically, he often has to hike out to remote locations to get reception, and the visuals of him alone in vast landscapes works as nice symbolism for the disconnect between him and the people in his life. This movie isn’t all loneliness though; it’s also about the strange relationship shared between Coogan and Brydon. It seems to be based less on friendship and camaraderie, and more on a mutual annoyance and sense of competition. Though Coogan is insulting towards Brydon’s contentment at being an impressionist, he still can’t help but try to outdo him at the mimicry game. And though he is annoyed at Brydon’s simple outlook on life and constant interjecting of voice work into casual conversation, he still can’t help but egg him on with argument and impression battles.
And that’s where the film’s humor lies. The dueling impressions are completely ridiculous, and ridiculously hysterical. Watching them battle with Michael Caines and Woody Allens could provide hours of entertainment. It’s not that impressions themselves are funny; they’re not. As a matter of fact, they’re kind of hacky and lame. But that’s why their battles are so funny. These guys get so serious and so passionate about who does the best clichéd Michael Caine impression that it nearly resembles a couple of ten year old boys punching each other in the arms. They’re putting their insecurities and their foibles on display, opening up a vein on the screen for the sake of comedy. They also improvise scat songs, period piece war films, and each other’s eulogies. That may seem kind of mundane for the meat and potatoes of a film, but Coogan and Brydon are so good together that it plays much better than it sounds on the page. And in addition to their interactions we get a couple dream sequences that very surgically reveal Coogan’s insecurities that I found absolutely hysterical. One involves a Ben Stiller cameo, and the other his father using a filthy word in the press. They were maybe my favorite bits of the film. Brydon works great as a foil, and his antagonistic banter with Coogan is invaluable, but how I felt about him as a character was a little bit more complex. The guy just never stops with his voices. At first it’s fun to watch it annoy Coogan, but after a while I wanted to strangle him myself. And it doesn’t quite feel like the movie thinks I will have this reaction. Brydon seems to be painted as the lovable simpleton and Coogan as the grumpy curmudgeon, but more often than not I found myself siding with Coogan when it came to the matter of Brydon as an annoyance. As a cartoon character in a movie, I guess he’s funny enough, but if I ever had to be around this guy in real life, I wouldn’t last more than a couple minutes.
The pacing of the film also makes it, at times, a challenging watch. At one point Coogan repeats the cliché, “It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.” This movie is betting a lot on the idea that this cliché rings true. If there is an end destination in place for the journey our two heroes are on, it’s never made clear to the audience. You’re spending time with a couple of characters, but whether or not they are going to grow or change by the end of the film, or what the flashpoint might be to cause that change, is never clear. This film isn’t so much a story as it is a series of abrasive conversations, hotel check-ins, eaten meals, and shots of a Land Rover driving through the countryside. It’s a quiet, simple movie much of the time. It’s a meditation, as well as a low-key character piece. Watching The Trip is a lot like watching an afternoon baseball game. It’s largely a pleasing experience, but probably you’ve only got one eye open and are catching a brief nap every now and again.
We’re not left completely out in the cold though, there’s a little something here and there to hang your hat on: a repeated image, an explored theme. In response to which is harder, constantly going after random women or raising a child, Coogan says, “Everything’s exhausting when you’re past 40”. The film raises the question of whether or not anybody has it good. Is accepting your small life, or constantly struggling towards something larger the better path to take? If the film takes a side, I won’t give it away, but it’s made clear that either path involves a whole lot of toil. We also get a repeated theme of people talking too much and making an annoyance of themselves. Whether they’re trying to show off a skill, or impress with a knowledge base, talking often represents insecurity. It seems that if we were truly content, probably we’d largely remain silent in our satisfaction. Also the restaurant review stuff adds some subtle humor. We get a lot of montage sequences of gourmet meals being prepared in gourmet kitchens, most of it seems to be the same routine of molding the food in cylindrical shapes and squirting some sauce on the plate with squeeze bottles. A lot of it involves searing scallops in a frying pan and topping it with foam made out of duck parts. The whole business, while thought of as being delicate and creative, appears to be as simple and routine as anything else. Perhaps there is no difference between being a respected actor and being an impressionist, or perhaps I read too much into shots of food cooking.
The razor’s edge that this movie walks is how much it can challenge you and give you nothing storytelling-wise before you tune out and get bored. Most other movies, following this timeline of non-events, would be complete failures. Luckily for this one, Coogan and Brydon work so well together that it avoids many of its potential pitfalls. This movie is powered 90% on charm, and it gets pretty far on it; but it ended up breaking down right before the finish line for me. There is a point, after they briefly visit Coogan’s parents, where they go through the motions of singing yet another song together while driving, that I got bored with things. The banter was cute, the little improv exercises were entertaining, but I’d had enough of it. This trip had gone on long enough. Luckily the end of the movie was right around the corner, so it didn’t negatively affect things too much. And it even mirrored the effects of really going on a road trip with someone; those built up annoyances of that last day. But regardless, the movie didn’t quite achieve its goal of keeping me engaged all the way through, and I can’t call it a complete success in the end.
