Review: The Trip

Comedian Steve Coogan is asked by The Observer newspaper to tour the north of the UK, sampling and writing about its fine dining. His foodie girlfriend was meant to accompany him, but when she bails (she’s going to the US and wants to take a break from each other anyway), he turns to long-time colleague and rival Rob Brydon. Along their journey the duo eat, bicker, annoy one another, and play a game of one-upmanship, with various impressions and the like. Meanwhile, Coogan reveals himself to be jealous of other people’s success, wanting to be seen as an accomplished character actor like Michael Sheen. He’s also going through a mid-life crisis and will crack onto anyone with tits and legs. Here’s a road trip so claustrophobic, you’d swear you were travelling in the car with them. They barely seem to even like each other.

Edited down from a 2010 BBC miniseries, this 2011 Michael Winterbottom (the eclectic director of “9 Songs”, “Tristram Shandy”, and “The Killer Inside Me”) comedy isn’t quite a documentary, so much as an improvised comedy with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon playing presumably exaggerated versions of themselves (similar to the characters they apparently played in “Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story”). It’s one of the strangest experiences I’ve had because it started out dull for me (I watch reality TV cooking shows but have less interest in food than I do in competitions and social experiments), but then became alternately annoying and hilarious, then a bit tiresome, and then after it was over it stayed with me. I kept thinking about it, reflecting on the characters, reflecting on my own life. I ended up finding it rather profound, really.

If I had any problem with the film at all, it’s the central premise. I know the film isn’t exactly a documentary in the traditional sense, but Steve Coogan still basically plays Steve Coogan and why would anyone hire Steve Coogan to tour the North of England and write about fine dining experiences? I never believed in that, especially since Coogan never seems to take any notes, let alone write any reviews. Sure, his girlfriend is a foodie and was meant to go with him, but it was Coogan who was hired by The Observer newspaper initially, not her and I never understood why. I’m not especially interested in food myself, let alone seeing two people eat for 90 minutes, but at least for the sake of my personal interest, they thankfully barely talk about the snooty food they’re eating (Fine, if it were a film about food, but it isn’t really about food but the people eating it), which I assume is a bit of a gag in itself. That makes it more palatable to non-foodies like me, but doesn’t make much sense for something supposedly documentarian.

There were other clearly non-documentary things in the film that took me out of the film a bit too, such as the appearance by Ben Stiller in a supposed dream, Coogan having a fling with a coke-user, not to mention that it’s unlikely he’d allow himself to be filmed as a philanderer or drug user anyway. So that was kind of annoying, but fairly minor.

Like I said, at times this film annoyed me and became a bit tiresome. Actually, it’s not the film, it’s Coogan and Brydon. You’ve got one guy (Coogan) who is an arrogant, skirt-chasing curmudgeon, and the other guy (Brydon) is seemingly a comparatively very nice person, but also seems to communicate solely through funny voices and impressions like the fat guy from “The Dream Team” who spoke only in TV catch-phrases. He borders on pathetic at times, in that regard, as though he’s scared to be himself. They are professional rivals to boot, and so not only are they annoying and tiresome to each other, but to a certain extent to the audience too. You wouldn’t want to be stuck in a car on a long journey with either of them to be honest. That’s why I at first thought that perhaps seeing this in half-hour miniseries form might’ve been better than the film, because it would be easier to get over the irritating parts if you were only watching it half an hour a week.

But y’know what? A lot of it is admittedly very funny, no matter what form you’re watching it in. Not all of their impersonations are so hot (neither does an especially good Woody Allen, the Ian McKellen impersonation is appalling, and Brydon’s De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, and Pacino are pretty awful), but when they’re on target, they’re hilarious. Brydon does an excellent Hugh Grant (which would appear to be a role he plays for his wife in intimate moments, interestingly), and I loved hearing Anthony Hopkins, Richard Burton, Roger Moore, Sean Connery, and even Christopher Lee as Scaramanga, parodied by both of them. Personally I think Coogan bests Brydon with his Lee and Connery impersonations (he even gets the snooty facial expression of Lee down pat!), but Brydon has his fair share of shining moments too.

The real shining moment, of course, is the much-talked about duelling Michael Caine impressions. Both are actually very good at it (‘You’re were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!’ is a line even I’m finding myself using), but Brydon really goes the extra mile by giving us an impression of Caine’s changing vocal inflections over time. Very clever, and very funny. Other moments are even funnier, including a show-stopper where they sing ABBA’s heartbreaking ‘The Winner Takes it All’ using various characters including the Swedish Chef from The Muppets, and most hysterically, the Christoph Waltz character from “Inglourious Basterds”. It’s so completely off-the-wall and random (even for a mostly improvised film as this), that I was practically crying tears of laughter. Brydon’s celebrated ‘small man in a box’ thing is absolutely ingenious, I still have no idea how he does it. Nor does Coogan, who tries in vain to do it himself at one point. If you’ve never seen it before, it’s almost worth seeing the film just for this bit.

There’s some dull travelogue stuff (that Billy Connolly does better if you ask me) and some local references that I didn’t much care for, but just as things were starting to get tedious, we come to the cemetery scene and this is really the heart of the film. Here Brydon asks Coogan what he’d say at his funeral, and Coogan basically rips his colleague/rival apart- mockingly, but you’re never quite sure if there’s a kernel of truth to it too or not, especially since it actually sounds somewhat accurate (He accuses Brydon of using humour to distance himself from reality). The easygoing Brydon shows reserves of good humour not to knock Coogan on his arse here, actually (Coogan won’t let Brydon give him a eulogy of course), and you realise just how arrogant and jealously competitive the man (Coogan) really is.

However, it’s at the very end of the film when you truly realise what the two stars and Winterbottom are getting at. It’s about what’s really important in life. One of them is content in a modestly happy existence, whilst the other is self-absorbed and seeks more, and it has perhaps cost him what is most important of all. It’s actually pretty deep and moving, especially considering that these are still two pretty irritating people (though one must remember that the Coogan and Brydon here are more the Coogan and Brydon of “Tristram Shandy” than the Coogan and Brydon in real-life).

I wasn’t always on side with this faux documentary, but it eventually won me over not only with good humour, but a bit of food for thought, too. The journey might be a bit bumpy at times, but the destination has you looking back far more fondly on “The Trip”.

Rating: B-