Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Joy Ride’ on VOD, an Inspired and Raunchy Romp Buoyed by its Talented Cast

I’m not sure we’ll find a more inspired and lovable comedy ensemble this year than the cast of Joy Ride (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video): Emily in Paris star Ashley Park leads Everything Everywhere All at Once breakout Oscar nominee Stephanie Hsu, comedian and Good Trouble star Sherry Cola and newcomer Sabrina Wu in a spirited and bawdy buddies-bonding/road-trip comedy from first-time feature director Adele Lim, writer of Crazy Rich Asians and Raya and the Last Dragon. Whether we need another yukfest of this sort is in question; what isn’t is that we could really (always!) use some good laughs. And considering the talent here, it seems like a pretty good bet. 

JOY RIDE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Joy Ride opens with that cliched record-scratch fzwoop sound, but don’t worry, you’ll get over it quickly. It’s 1998 and Lolo is a kid and she and her parents have just moved from China to Caucasianville, USA. They stand agape in a cloud of culture shock when a nice White couple introduces themselves and their adopted Chinese daughter, Audrey. The two girls are on the playground together when some little shit spits some racism at Audrey, so Lolo socks him in the face and from there? Bonded. For. Life. Twenty-odd years later, Audrey (Ashley Park) is an up-and-coming attorney and Lolo (Sherry Cola) lives in her backyard shed, making art of, shall we say, a humorously provocative sexual nature, e.g., “Licky Cat,” which is like the Japanese lucky cat, but with a big long suggestive tongue darting from its mouth-slit. They’re yin and yang, these two: Audrey is responsible and put-together and, we’ll later learn, enjoys superficial success despite wrestling with some identity issues. Lolo is hornier than a horny toad but struggling career-wise (Licky Cat has yet to take off, see), although she absolutely knows and accepts who she is. 

As is the case with every movie protagonist who happens to be a lawyer, Audrey is on the verge of becoming partner at the firm. But the career bump won’t happen unless she closes a deal with a Beijing businessman, prompting a trip to China. Audrey doesn’t speak the language, but Lolo does, so she tags along as translator. And as things inevitably go in wacky comedies, Lolo invites along her cousin Deadeye (Sabrina Wu), an eccentric and socially awkward K-pop fanatic, because why? Because we need to further diversify sources of comedy, that’s why. The trip offers Audrey an opportunity to hang out with her best college friend Kat (Stephanie Hsu), who’s the star of a cheesy Chinese historical soap opera. And there you have it: A female foursome ripe for misadventures, mishaps, mistakes and probably a few other things starting with “mis-”. 

And so it goes, as Audrey’s promotion plot becomes entangled with a quest to find her birth mother. She and Lolo and Kat and Deadeye drink too much and barf and do a bunch of drugs and have wild sexual encounters as they embark on a cross-country trip on trains and buses and trucks, sometimes with a basketball team chock-full of hunky men. They try to pass themselves off as a K-pop group and hang with Deadeye and Lolo’s grandparents, and maybe they learn something about themselves during the emotionally gooey parts, which sounds like a euphemism, and kind of is, but the phrase functions in both a literal and metaphorical fashion here, which is why the movie works pretty damn well as an ultra-raunchy comedy with heart.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Joy Ride can totally hang with Bridesmaids and Girls Trip – and frankly probably should have been as big a hit. 

Performance Worth Watching: I dunno – all four leads pretty much bear equal weight comedically and dramatically. So let’s go with Cola, who plays the classic, gotta-love-’em horndog with equal parts familiarity and freshness.  

Memorable Dialogue: Audrey shows an odd bit of xenophobia while visiting China: “I heard that, if you’re short, you’ll get kidnapped to go live on a gymnastics farm.”

Sex and Skin: Tons: graphic nudity (note: more comic than sexy), lots of female gazing and a couple of inside/outside/upside-down sex scenes (note: also more comic than sexy). 

Our Take: No orifice is off-limits in Joy Ride, so consider yourself warned – this might be the raunchiest movie since Girls Trip or Bad Moms. You won’t be surprised to learn its brand of highly charged, bad-taste comedy is from veteran Family Guy writers Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao and lists Seth Rogen as a producer; it’s clearly drawing influence from the aforementioned hard-R films as well as prime-era Farrelly Bros., Judd Apatow and ’80s sex comedies. And while the story it offers is familiar and looser than a bag of leaves – the plotting is haphazard at best, a strung-together collection of comic set pieces – it’s the talent and inspired gags that get it off the ground and keep it from crashing.

Lim’s ability to hold everything together is key, making sure the whiplash of shifting tones from ribald to sentimental won’t put us in PT for six weeks. The film is the rare instance where ideas trump plot, where jokes are leavened with taboo-pushing commentary on race, sex and culture. The best example is when Audrey pooh-poohs sharing a train car with various Chinese people because she thinks they look sketchy; she chooses to sit with a blonde American woman who, of course, ends up being big trouble, leading to the movie’s funniest sequence, a cocaine-fueled series of lunatic moments rife with potent punchlines and physical comedy. Lim can’t quite maintain that level of inspiration throughout, especially come the third act, which follows an archaic formula in which friendships are frayed when things get said and said hard, but we never foster a single doubt that fences will be mended. But Joy Ride’s near-anarchic spirit and unimpeachably game cast keep us here, in the moment and laughing, and that’s pretty much all that matters.

Our Call: Bottom line, Joy Ride is consistently funny, if you’ve got the yarbles. And you do have the yarbles, right? STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.