Stephanie Hsu | Bouquets & Brickbats

08/07/23

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Viewed via an Unlimited ‘Secret Screening,’ Joy Ride is a film we probably wouldn’t bother to book in normal circumstances – but I’m all for stepping out of my comfort zone now and then. This is a rumbustious comedy, a sort of Asian-American Bridesmaids.

Audrey (Ashley Park) is working in a Seattle law firm and jumps at the chance of going to China to oversee an important business deal. She has no memories of her birthplace because she was adopted as a baby by a white American couple, but she’s still besties with Lolo (Sherry Cola), her friend and protector ever since her arrival in the USA. Lolo is an artist, who specialises in objects inspired by human genitalia – something that writer/director Adele Lim seems to think is hilarious, and something on which we’ll have to agree to differ.

Would it be a good idea for Audrey to take Lolo to China with her? Clearly it wouldn’t, but of course she does anyway. Along for the ride comes Lolo’s hapless pal, ‘Deadeye’ (Sabrina Wu), a non-binary computer nerd obsessed with K Pop. Deadeye is a strangely adorable character and one of the best things about this patchy tale.

Once in Beijing, the trio meet up with mutual friend, Kat (Stephanie Hsu), an actor currently filming a popular television series, with a Hollywood deal in the pipeline. Kat and Lolo have an adversarial relationship, which is intensified when Kat introduces her hunky fiancee, Clarence (Desmond Chiam), a devout Christian who has no knowledge of Kat’s sexually active past, nor of the fact that she sports a memorable tattoo in an intimate place.

When Audrey meets the Chinese businessman with whom she needs to broker a deal, he’s clearly unimpressed when she admits to knowing nothing of her origins. When Lolo suggests it might be a good idea for Audrey to reconnect with her birth mother, in order to save the deal, the four friends promptly set off on an odyssey to the place where Audrey was born…

On paper, it sounds like a complicated scenario, but essentially, it’s an excuse for a breathless romp that meanders through a variety of locations, occasionally managing to be genuinely funny. More often than not, however, it confuses the lead characters’ insatiable appetites for sex and cocaine with humour. You could argue that there have been lots of films in which male characters follow similar trajectories, but if I’m honest, I don’t care much for them either. I’d also be more impressed if Joy Ride‘s ultimate message wasn’t one of those fridge magnet statements about friendship and forgiveness. And the problem is, you can see it coming from miles away.

The best bits here are the observations about different cultures, the way that a person’s upbringing influences the decisions they make throughout life. Trying to find a train carriage, for instance, Audrey shies away from sharing with Chinese people and instead assumes the lone white female on the train is more trustworthy. Big mistake.

Ultimately, Joy Ride delivers pretty much what it says in the title: a silly, frenetic chase through a series of unlikely situations, sometimes hitting the jackpot, but mostly missing by miles. A potentially funny sequence where the foursome try to impersonate a K Pop band (in order to get through an airport checkout without passports) is full of promise, but is squandered when they can only manage to deliver a truly forgettable few lines. Still, I’m hardly in the demographic for this. If Hsu’s recent success in Everything Everywhere All at Once is anything to go by, this could do serious business.

2.9 stars

Philip Caveney

13/05/22

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Cinematic multiverses seem to be coming thick and fast at the moment. No sooner has Dr Strange shuffled his way through one, then this arrives. Everything Everywhere All at Once is the sophomore effort from the directorial partnership known as ‘The Daniels.’ (I didn’t catch their debut, Swiss Army Man, but I know it has its followers.) EEAAO is currently receiving enthusiastic buzz and has already been garlanded with glowing reviews, but – though it undoubtedly has moments of genuine brilliance – it often feels as though the directors aren’t as in control of their concept as they ought to be.

Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) and her timid husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), run a chaotic laundromat in Simi Valley, California. Evelyn isn’t happy with her life and she’s constantly at odds with her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), who is gay, something that Evelyn tries to hide from her father, Gong Gong (James Wang). The family are summoned to the IRS office where they are subjected to an interrogation by ruthless tax inspector, Deirdre Beaubeirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis). Evelyn has tried to claim a karaoke machine as a legitimate business expense and Deirdre isn’t at all happy.

It’s round about this point that Waymond reveals that he’s not actually who he seems, but a Waymond from an entirely different reality. He’s come here to try to prevent Evelyn from being destroyed by an evil entity who looks very like her own daughter.

It would be pointless to try to give any more plot details because from hereon in – as the title might suggest – what ensues is a breathless free-for-all, as Evelyn stumbles helplessly in and out of her various incarnations, acquiring skills along the way. One minute she’s a skilled martial artist, the next a trained chef, then she’s an opera singer and, in what must be the film’s most bizarre sequence, a lesbian with hot-dog sausages for fingers. Along the way, there are references to other movies – 2001: A Space Odyssey, In the Mood for Love and er… Ratatouille, to name but three.

But it’s an exasperating journey. One moment, I’m genuinely impressed by what I’m watching, the next I’m just… confused. Where are we? What’s happening?

Yeoh is splendid in what must be the most eccentric role-choice of her career, while Huy Quan (who has barely graced cinema screens for more than four decades) makes a decent fist of Waymond. It’s interesting to note that The Daniels did first consider Jackie Chan for this role (a kung-fu punch-up where Waymond uses a bumbag as a set of improvised nunchuks could have stepped right out of one of Chan’s films). There are some comedy sequences in the mix too, and the crowd at the screening I attend are laughing throughout.

But all too often if feels as though The Daniels are deliberately going for cheap shots. Another fight scene involving butt plugs and oversized dildos just feels exploitative – and do we really need to see Evelyn eating her father’s snot? Furthermore, with a running time of two hours and nineteen minutes, EEAAO definitely overstays it’s welcome.

This then, is the curate’s egg multiverse – good in parts, but occasionally indigestible.

3.8 stars

Philip Caveney