Joy Ride: Gross Comedy Genre Meets Girl Power

A Raucously Joyous Ride

Drunk, sloppy, gross comedies have been considered part of the masculine domain but with Joy Ride, you can comfortably redact that notion, writes Manik Sharma.

“IF you do not know where you come from, how do you know who you are?” a Chinese business associate asks Audrey, the lawyer at the heart of Joy Ride. Audrey is on a trip to China, her homeland from where she was adopted by American parents. This chance professional excursion urges her to reconsider her past as an inseparable part of her being. It’s a routine homecoming film, except it’s re-contextualised by the actors steering it. Travelling across the oceans are a bunch of Asian American women, in a gross-out, bummer farce that gives the buddy road movie a welcome update with some Asian sass and chic. Joy Ride isn’t particularly clever in the way it goes about extracting laughs, but it is unhinged — unsavoury even — in the most delectable and charming way possible.

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GIRL POWER

Joy Ride: Deliciously Wicked Ode To Female Friendships Lives Up To Its Name

By Manik Sharma

Audrey, played by Ashley Park, is a committed career woman. She is asked to take a business trip to close a deal in China. Reluctant at first, she is somewhat assuaged by her accompanying friend Lolo (Sherry Cola) a beat, outspoken artist and her cousin, the non-binary Deadeye, played with eerie goofiness by Sabrina Wu. The three team up with Kat (Stephanie Hsu), Audrey’s college friend turned actress who lives the dual lie of hiding her scandalous past life from her conservative fiancé. All four obviously have skeletons in their closets or at least baggage they’d like to get off of their chest. Joy Ride traces the unanticipated chain of events that sends the group on a wild journey that pushes them apart, before pulling them back together. It’s the white-men-being-lunatics template that has for the longest time seemed like an American thing, except with Joy Ride it gets an authentically Asian upgrade in both form and texture.

Along the joyously bumpy road to salvation, the four women endure embarrassments and educations. Audrey learns about her sobering roots, Lolo contemplates her wastefulness, Deadeye her sense of place, and Kat the identity she has willingly closeted. Identity is crucial to the wider theme here and it is arrived at by predictably hairy and hilarious means. Vomit gets thrown around, as drinking games turn into civil massacres. From tactically evading a gang of cocaine smugglers to literally shaking an intimidating team of basketball players from the feet up, the girls grind and achieve a form of shallow, but life-affirming greatness. A meta song sequence that Deadeye spearheads, so the four can pass off as a K-pop band called ‘Brownie Tuesday’, is the stuff of pop-culture ecstasy. It’s every bit as sassy, blown-up and inane as it is affirmative of the civil tissue social media represents to those who physically cannot reach out. “They’re just online friends. They aren’t real friends,” Deadye, the nerdiest of the four says in resignation, before being proven otherwise.

Directed by Adele Lim, this film is fully aware of the template it is borrowing, and the audience it is catering to. It’s indulgent and crass at points but it also knows how to rein itself in so the emotional core of the narrative isn’t lost on us. Drunk, sloppy, gross comedies have been considered part of the masculine domain but with Bridesmaids, and now Joy Ride you can comfortably redact that notion for it wilts under the force of self-willed women. Unlike similar films led by men, Joy Ride also has a vulnerable core. All of its four protagonists are fighting to retain a sense of self, with Audrey also trying to discover who she really is, beyond the careerism and the hunger to launch something that is already, admirably, evident for everyone to see. Neither the artist nor the workaholic have it easy, neither the misfit nor the ‘eye candy’. Identity is a mangled envelope, that can be straightened by the tip of a finger or the punching chaos of a loony trip across a foreign but familiar land. Furthermore, Joy Ride, much like Crazy Rich Asians before it, establishes the staying power of Asian artists within the wider realm of American, maybe even global pop culture.

Joy Ride is as silly, goofy and delirious as it looks and sounds. It takes no prisoners, and goes full-tilt into a breakaway journey that jolts a few, and shakes pretty much everyone who is part of it. Moreover, it has a soul to latch onto amidst all the drunken mishaps, the gory thunder of awkwardness and the exaggerations it is prepared to indulge for effect. The film obviously tests your patience with corny dialogue, a predictable visual style and the sight of unseemly bodily functions, but it will also leave you with a bite-sized chunk of humanity to hold on to. For, these women have to wear their heels over their head to learn what shoes actually fit them. Acceptance is the key to unlocking their true self. It’s a realisation that is arrived at in deliciously feminine and wicked ways.

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