Movie reviews: 'Joy Ride' is a culturally specific story that smashes stereotypes

JOY RIDE: 3 ½ STARS

“Joy Ride,” a new comedy starring Ashley Park and Sherry Cola and now playing in theatres, is a raunchy road trip movie that pushes the boundaries of both its humor and its examination 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 suburban Washington state town. Fast friends from the playground to adulthood, they are a great example of how opposites attract. Audrey is a career-obsessed corporate lawyer, on the fast track 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 close a deal with millionaire Chao (Ronny Chieng), Lolo tags along as translator and troublemaker.

“Best friends’ trip,” she shouts. “This is going to be iconic.”

Completing the crew are Lolo’s eccentric cousin Deadeye (Sabrina Wu) and Audrey’s college BFF Kat (“Everything Everywhere All at Once’s” Stephanie Hsu) who is now a television star in Beijing. It’s an uneasy group. Deadeye is off in their own world and Lolo and Kat constantly snipe at one another.

On the ground in Beijing, Audrey and her squad meet with Chao in a crowded nightclub for a night of excessive drinking, eating and playing a slapping game that is as painful as it is ridiculous.

“I heard that if you keep up with Chinese businessmen,” says Lolo as a new tray of shots arrives at the table, “they respect you more.”

The night turns serious when Chao says he wants to meet Audrey’s family.

“How are we supposed to do business together if we do not know one another’s families?” he asks. Trouble is, 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 should track down her birth mom, has already done some research and discovered the mother lives an hour and a half away. When Chao insists on meeting her, Audrey and company set off on a wild sex, drugs and rock n’ roll (OK, make that K-Pop) fueled trip to reunite mother and daughter.

“Joy Ride” is explicit and emotional. Audrey and her friends engage in a comedy-of-errors—they become reluctant drug mules, run amok in a hotel full of professional basketball players and perform a rowdy remake of Cardi B’s “WAP” with an unexpected reveal—but mixed in with the raunch are sincere messages of identity and belonging that prevent the movie from feeling like a series of outrageous set pieces strung together. The whole thing is bound by the cast’s genuine chemistry, a kind of “Bridesmaids” bond that allows for the movie’s wild shifts in tone.

It is Audrey’s search for identity and self-discovery as an Asian adoptee living in America that lies at the heart of the story. Her coming-of-age in China brings with it an introspection uncommon in hard-R comedies.

“Joy Ride” is a culturally specific story that smashes stereotypes with vagina tattoos and universal messages of self-worth, renewal and the importance of comradery.

THE LESSON: 3 ½ STARS

A chamber piece set against a backdrop of the literary world, “The Lesson,” now playing in theatres, is a fabulously twisty noir-ish study in betrayal and revenge.

Liam Sommers (Daryl McCormack) is an aspiring author, fresh out of university, who lands a cushy job as a live-in tutor for his idol, the fabulously wealthy J.M. Sinclair (Richard E. Grant), the most revered author in the country, who also just happens to be the subject of Liam’s thesis.

“I’m sure he’d be flattered,” says Sinclair’s brooding wife, art dealer Hélène (Julie Delpy) to Liam, “but you’re not here for him.”

“Good writers borrow,” says Sinclair, “but great writers steal,” and Sinclair is a great writer.

The reclusive author is recovering from the loss of his older son Felix by suicide two years before, and has brought Liam in to prep his other son, a snot-nosed brat named Bertie (Stephen McMillan), for his Oxford entrance exams.

“He has to get in, Liam,” says Hélène.

On arrival, Liam discovers that despite seemingly having it all—think Downton Abbey with fewer servants—the family lacks one crucial thing, happiness. Kept under the thumb of the egomaniacal Sinclair, who Bertie describes as, “uncaring and cruel,” an air of tension hangs over the house like a shroud.

When Sinclair agrees to read Liam’s work-in-progress novel in exchange for the ambitious, but unpublished, author’s thoughts on his latest book—"The ending, Part III? It feels like a different novel,” says Liam—it sets off a series of events that unveil the movie’s main themes of inspiration, ethics and vengeance.

The darkly comic “The Lesson” succeeds not because of its pulpy story, which is a bit of down-and-dirty fun, but because of the way the actors inhabit their characters. Grant and Delpy are perfectly cast as a couple who opted for cruelty over love many years ago.

Grant embraces Sinclair’s techy personality and never tries to make him likeable. It’s a bravura performance that drips with superiority, intellect and derision. 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 allows the odd feeling, other than contempt, to bleed through her icy façade. Her misery is evident, she has lost her son and more, but there is something more lurking just behind her restrained disguise.

It is McCormack, however, who grounds the flights of fancy with a very real performance fueled by ambition, that prevents “The Lesson” from becoming too arch, too aware of its excesses.

“The Lesson” is a slow burn, a story that unfolds at its own pace with wit, theatrical cruelty and welcome surprises.

THIS PLACE: 2 ½ STARS

“This Place,” a new coming-of-adulthood film now playing in theatres, stars Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs and Priya Guns as two young women who must investigate their pasts 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 go to university 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 writing notebook, containing all her work, at a laundromat, it leads to a meet cute with Malai (Priya Guns), a Tamil undergraduate student who lives with her older brother Ahrun (Alex Joseph) while figuring out her future.

Sparks immediately fly, and their friendship quickly turns into love, but before their relationship can fully blossom, each must deal with family issues.

As 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 must learn to say hello to her father Behrooz (Ali Momen). She learns of the complicated past shared by her parents, and her mother’s concern that if the truth about Kawenniióhstha’s father was known, blood quantum laws would deem her not Mohawk enough to live on the reservation.

As the two daughters of refugees grapple with the influence their familial connections have on their lives, it creates a strain in their relationship.

In a scant 87 minutes “This Place” covers a great deal of ground. The love story is the starting place as we get to know Kawenniióhstha and Malai, but the movie also touches on the generational trauma of genocide, parental expectations and otherness.

The love story is heartfelt and has a pleasing intimacy to it, even in its earliest stages but unfortunately, neither character is allowed the time to fully explore the repercussions of the film’s themes on their lives. They are not aided by dialogue that is too often stilted and obvious.

“This Place” has much going for it. The connection between the lead characters feels authentic, and their queerness is accepted and never questioned. But while it falters somewhat in its execution, the movie’s heart, and its messages of love, compassion and understanding, never do.