Tag Archives: Trip to Italy

The Trip and Trip to Italy

My Ratings for The Trip: 3.6/5 and Trip to Italy 3.4/5.

The Trip (2010) and it’s recent follow-up Trip to Italy (2014) are probably the most entertaining road movies of the recent times,  intelligent comedy dipped and coated in sarcastic British humor.

The combination of good food and exploring new places can’t get better than this.

Warning: The Trip and Trip to Italy contains heavy dosage of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon (both playing themselves) and their funny impersonations (sometimes irritating though) as they travel around trying out fancy cuisines.    

Michael Winterbottom known for films like A Mighty Heart and 24 Hour Party People  seems to have found the perfect recipe for such light hearted genre of comedy.  It’s more of dry, tongue-in-cheek kind of humor, very much dialogue-based but entertaining.

Since there is no proper storyline in both The Trip and Trip to Italy, it’s all based on the performances of the two lead actors Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon and the chemistry between them. And they are surprisingly fresh and natural in their performances at being themselves.

With only a hint of their personal lives as the back story they have managed to smooth sail both the films with their classy charm and funny imitation skills (of mostly Hollywood actors).  

Interestingly both these films doesn’t follow a proper written script, most of it is based on improvisation. Then i have to say it’s damn well improvised.

There is also a popular TV series The Trip made by the same director with the same star cast and with similar plot that recently ran it’s second season successfully.

I am afraid that probably more of this ‘Trip’ films (same actor-director combo) may come up in future.

Though i find both the films funny enough (the first one more intriguing and fresh) but frankly won’t be too excited about another sequel. Good films and their characters shouldn’t be over exploited or else they often tend to loose their charm.

Overall witty and amusing, the best thing about The Trip and Trip to Italy is that these films never try too hard to make you laugh but does make you laugh for sure.