Trip and fall

There was an enjoyable little movie that came out in the UK a few years ago, called The Trip. It basically followed two comic actors (Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon), playing very slightly fictionalized versions of themselves, as they drove around the north of England, staying in fancy hotels and eating elaborate meals.  The notion was that Coogan was to review the restaurants for The Observer newspaper. It was part travelogue and part food porn, but the real pleasure was its unscripted feel, as the two protagonists discussed all manner of topics while airing their favourite impersonations: Michael Caine, Al Pacino and many more.

So this year we have the inevitable sequel, now available on DVD: The Trip to Italy.  And it's an epic fail.

Coogan and Brydon are both back, as is the conceit that The Observer has commissioned a series of restaurant reviews.  This time the journey is to take the pair from Turin to Rome and ultimately to Sicily. Italian scenery, Italian food and wine, killer impersonations -- what could go wrong?  The answer, alas, is just about everything.

The scenery is wonderful, of course, but the movie was clearly not made in the sun-baked summer months.  The weather is frankly a bit grey throughout, which does nothing to enhance the dolce vita vibe that the producers were obviously hoping for.  There's food, but it gets a lot less screen time than in the original movie. And there are duelling impersonations, but those fade into the background as the movie progresses, because a fatal mistake has been made: instead of relying mainly on the quickfire comedic talents of its stars, The Trip to Italy has a worked-out-in-advance plot.  The loss of spontaneity makes the movie far less enjoyable than its predecessor, and even a bit mean-spirited.

Even worse, the movie unerringly aims for the cheapest gags. Brydon and Coogan make the drive in a Mini, mainly so that they can do the obligatory Michael Caine/Italian Job line,  "you were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off" -- but this is pretty much thrown away right at the start of the film. Later, at Pompeii, Brydon hauls out one of his moldy-oldie party pieces, an odd little vocal thing called "small man in a box", to have a conversation with the calcified corpse of a victim of the Vesuvius eruption. Not, perhaps, in the best of taste, but worse than that, not funny.

A quick look at Rotten Tomatoes reveals that critics quite liked The Trip to Italy, but regular audiences were much less impressed. I'm with the paying customers on this one.  My three word review: non mi piace.