The Trip series

  • The Trip to Greece (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2022) And so The Trip tetralogy of film ends (so far)— The Trip to Greece features heavier material, an extended farewell, and some great footage of Greece… whether it’s landscapes, or our two protagonists eating and imitating other celebrities. It’s almost exactly what was delivered by the first three films of the series, but that’s the entire point of it. Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon reprise their roles as Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon with easy familiarity (helped along by the fact that the film is a distillation of a six-episode TV series, meaning that they have spent a lot of time together in the decade the series has been running). But there’s an air of wistfulness and loss to this (announced) last instalment tracing The Odyssey—even in themes and execution, the film is about death and closure, with the protagonists leaving each other well before the end of the film as they both pursue their own problems and reflect on mortality. This may be a bit too much for a series predicated on the two stars trading quips over good meals, but it may be necessary to provide the series with a sense of closure without necessarily precluding an eventual fifth instalment. (Considering the tonal shift between the end of the third film and the beginning of the fourth one, it’s not as if strong narrative consistency is a feature of the series.) Until then, The Trip to Greece remains a likable fourth outing with two affable performers, and a melancholic break that earns its gravitas from the journey through the three previous films.

  • The Trip to Spain (2017)

    The Trip to Spain (2017)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2020) If you’ve seen The Trip or The Trip to Italy, you know what to expect from The Trip to Spain… mostly. Clearly, it’s still about Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan, playing fictionalized versions of themselves, travelling, eating, impersonating and bickering throughout a few days of Spanish tourism. It’s exactly what they did in the previous two instalments, and it’s about as good and amusing as it was – provided that you have a tolerance for the same. The formula survives another bout pretty well: the scenery is usually magnificent, the food looks great, Coogan and Brydon each go over-the-top with funny impersonations, and the film’s dips into drama once again take the form of the two middle-aged men working out their insecurities and small-scale personal crises. The most distinctive element for the film involves a running theme about Don Quixote and Pancho Villa, leading to an ending that struck me as overdramatic. [November 2024: …and isn’t really followed up in the fourth-and-final instalment The Trip to Greece.] Still, The Trip to Spain is rather good fun in a comfortable way: If you like the shtick, take a look, and if you don’t, then don’t.

  • The Trip (2010)

    The Trip (2010)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2020) So here’s this as a film premise: Two British comedians show up as themselves, going on the road in Northern England to eat at a few restaurants for a newspaper article, bickering all along the way. Their dialogue largely consists of put-downs, impressions, and put-downs of their impressions. All shot in constantly moving handheld camera. It sounds terrible in theory but The Trip works quite a bit better in practice, mostly because this is a film that can be listened to almost as well as watched, and both Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon can be really likable at times. Invented subplots include romantic troubles and Coogan’s nightmares about his career. Along the way, we get a glimpse at two men trying to argue their way out of their own psychological anxieties. The film originally consisted of six 30-minute episodes that were then re-edited in a single 2-hour feature film, presumably cutting out some dialogue and landscapes along the way. In all honesty, The Trip is not that good of a conventionally narrative film – even in its boiled-down edited form, it’s not decently plotted and somewhat limited in what it can do within the limits of its format. But it’s enjoyable to watch, and there’s clearly a successful formula here, as it was followed by no less than three sequels (so far).