‘Joy Ride’ Review: A Total Laugh-Out-Loud Riot
Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, Stephanie Hsu, and Sabrina Wu provide non-stop laughs in Joy Ride, one of the funniest and most energetic comedies of the year.
It’s safe to say that the state of the studio comedy isn’t the best right now. We’ve had some hits, with Jackass Forever and No Hard Feelings, but the theatrical value of a studio comedy has been lacking since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Studios prefer to relegate these films to streaming services. While it’s understandable that they want to grow their library of direct-to-consumer content, it’s also detrimental to the value of a theatrical comedy. Adele Lim’s Joy Ride wants to prove to audiences that the studio comedy is alive and thriving in a theatrical environment. In that regard, they more than succeed.
Because Lionsgate was so confident about the film’s theatrical scope, Joy Ride premiered at South by Southwest in March and at CinemaCon in late April alongside screenings of The Flash and The Boogeyman. And after having seen all three in a cinema, I can confidently say that Joy Ride is the best of the bunch. From the minute it begins, it pulls no punches at providing extreme laughter as the audience sees how Audrey Sullivan (Ashley Park) became best friends with Lolo (Sherry Cola) after she sucker-punched a racist child on the nose at a playground (and there is far more than the trailer did not reveal). Many years pass, and Audrey is now a lawyer and on the cusp of securing a major deal with Chao (Ronny Chieng), a Chinese businessman, for her firm. She travels to Beijing with Lolo and her cousin Deadeye (Sabrina Wu), and the three, alongside Audrey’s best friend Kat (Stephanie Hsu), go on the craziest of adventures.
It starts with them wanting to find Audrey’s birth mother after Chao requests to meet her during his birthday celebration, and the laugh riot begins from there. Joy Ride is unafraid to put each of the characters in extremely uncomfortable situations, from drinking the craziest concoctions in a night club or sharing a train car with a drug dealer (Meredith Hagner) who forces them to consume unimaginable amounts of hard drugs (alongside shoving them up their…well…this is something you’ll need to see for yourself). But the biggest and most elaborate setpiece is set in a hotel, where the four protagonists meet extremely hot football players. It’s still early in the year, but it absolutely could give Beau is Afraid a run for its money for the craziest sex scene of any 2023 film (although Ari Aster’s movie had a bigger surprise factor than Joy Ride, the laughs are still very consistent). All of these sequences give the actors the opportunity to flex their physical comedy muscles, and they’re all excellent.
It's of no surprise to anyone who saw Everything Everywhere All at Once that Hsu is the most talented physical comic of the bunch, but every actor has their time to shine. Park is excellent as Audrey, teetering the line between the “clueless American” who can’t seem to get past the language barriers set by her two best friends while also being completely unashamed at putting herself in the most riotous of situations. She hasn’t had the opportunity to do that in shows like Emily in Paris or Beef (even though she is very funny in both of them). In Joy Ride, she’s all in for whatever Lim and screenwriters Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao throw at her. She has incredible chemistry with Cola, the more raunchy character of the quartet but a more nuanced protagonist than, say, Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids. Wu is also great as Deadeye, a character that gives Lim, Chevrapravatdumrong, and Hsiao the opportunity to balance out deadpan comedic timing with the surprisingly vivid energy of a K-Pop fan.
The film is also terrifically edited and shot, emphasizing the comedy's visual aspect more than anything else. It’s why the movie needs to be seen in a cinema: the comedy is always in-your-face and ultra-maximalist and never wastes a second of making you laugh. But it’s also surprisingly human and far more heartfelt than possibly imagined. As seems to be the norm with studio comedies these days, the latter half of the movie is more focused on the human drama behind the characters than consistent laughter, and they’re the best parts of the movie.
However, it’s also terribly predictable. Not to divulge any details here, but many of Joy Ride’s emotional beats can be seen a mile away. You can pretty much know how it’ll end as soon as it begins, no matter what happens in between. For a comedy that takes huge swings in thwarting each character in one uncomfortable situation after the other, it could’ve also subverted some of the story beats for it to feel fresher and more engaging.
However, it would’ve been a bigger issue if the film wasn’t funny. But Joy Ride is a consistent and total laugh riot that keeps its audiences locked into the picture, always wondering what will happen to these four next. It’s a rare feat these days that a comedy always stages more elaborate (and funnier) sequences than its previous ones. Only the Jackass movies have successfully achieved that feat. Joy Ride comes pretty close, always finding new and exciting ways to side-split the audience and make them want to fall off the floor. That hotel scene was it for me. Now that’s something you definitely do not see in your average Netflix comedy.