Imagine you’ve organized a romantic getaway with your gourmand girlfriend. You want to show her the picturesque part of the country from which you hail. You plan to stay at quaint hotels and eat your way through the Lake District at the finest restaurants. Even better, you’ve managed to get someone else to pay for it by arranging to write about it for a newspaper. Then imagine your girlfriend has decided she needs a “break” from the relationship — and runs off to her native America in proof of her point. Disappointing and disastrous, no? You can’t cancel — that newspaper is counting on you. You ask everyone you know to accompany you, to no avail. In desperation, you call your last resort: a friend you sort of like, sort of don’t. The result is “The Trip,” a comedy about two rivalrous pals touring northern England together. It’s the kind of journey that can bring a pair closer together — or completely tear them apart.
Here the friends are fictionalized versions of themselves, comedian-actor-writer Steve Coogan and comedian-actor Rob Brydon. They did a similar dog and pony show in 2006’s “Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story,” which was also directed by Michael Winterbottom. The two funnymen have an enviable chemistry with each other. “The Trip” is partly improvised. Sometimes that heralds a disaster — see this year’s “Your Highness” — but here it works. Viewers feel like a fly on the wall — or a third seat at the table — listening to two witty, amusing men intent on one-upping each other.
“The Trip”‘s strength is also its weakness. Dinner-table conversation is rarely continually engaging. (Unless Dr. Johnson is at your table.) The film is actually an edited version of the television series broadcast on BBC Two. The structure seems more suited to being consumed in small bites — especially since just two men fill the screen, with the odd phone conversation with a wife and a girlfriend. (Steve bemoans her absence, but he has no trouble finding bedmates throughout the north of England.)
The film might be best as a soundtrack to your own meal. A depressed Steve puts in Joy Division’s “Atmosphere” as they crawl onto the M1 motorway. “That’s what I’ve chosen as the soundtrack for this landscape,” he moodily tells Rob. When they arrive at their first destination, Rob declares, “It’s the sort of place you’d shoot a Miss Marple.” Lucky for the viewer, “The Trip” they take is nothing so dark or depressing as that.
‘The Trip’
3.5 out of 5 stars
Stars: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Rated: Not rated (some language, sexual situations)
Running time: 107 minutes
