Todd Phillips' "Road Trip"

For his entry in the post Farley Brothers gross-out campus comedy cycle Phillips turns his attention to that uniquely American student tradition the road trip. Taking a tour group around the Ithaca campus 'mature' student Barry (Green) attempts to enliven the experience by relating the tale of his friends’ trip from upstate New York to the heart of Texas.

Ithaca student Josh (Meyer) fearing that his long-term girlfriend Tiffany (Blanchard) studying in Austin has broken their vow of faithfulness, when she fails to call, gets off with Beth (Smart), videos it and mails the tape to her. When Tiffany finally calls Josh has just three days to cross the country and recover the tape. Okay maybe it's a little more complicated than that but it's just the set-up and we just want to get to the prostate milking gags, right?

Josh, joined by his friends party animal E.L. (Scott) and pot-smoking intellectual Rubin (Constanzo) rope-in the nerdy Kyle (Qualls) on account of the fact that he has a car and set off to cross the country. Along the way they encounter all the traditional college movie conventions, the frat-house party, the roadside diner and the sleazy motel all given a slightly new twist by Phillips.

Phillips' film maybe part of the gross-out cycle but it evokes an earlier era of comedy bearing a closer resemblance to "The Sure Thing" and "Ferris Bueler's Day Off" than to the likes of "There's Something About Mary" or "American Pie". The gross-out gags are here with such clichés as OAP with a hard on, fat bird making out with skinny bloke and the aforementioned mentioned prostate milking, but these are the low-points of this character driven comedy rather than the highlights, and it is no surprise to see Ivan Reitman's name on the credits.

As a character driven comedy rather than the traditional fart gag packed caper the cast of unknowns have mush riding on them. Meyer the veteran of the group with credits such as "Clueless" and "Go" under his belt does a splendid job of providing the film with it's moral centre, but as is traditional in these cases it is the supporting characters that provide the interest.

Scott risks typecasting by following up his debut in "American Pie" with a very similar boorish character, while the charming Constanzo and the constantly watch able Qualls make their debuts completing a triptych of characters that take the traditional stereotypical characters and breath new life into them by twisting them in entirely unexpected directions.

Smart and Blanchard do a fair job of breathing life into the traditionally underwritten female roles in a male dominated genre, while Fred Ward does justice to the stereotypical role of the overbearing father, but the true discovery of the piece is the fantastic Green, who plays up to the role he has honed on his MTV chat-show, pontificating about the nature of mortality while feeding Rubin's snake, espousing the power of experimentation while getting two naked girls to touch his nipples and generally goofing off.

The slow build-up which I so ruthlessly dismissed in my synopsis above pays off dividends as Phillips produces a movie that rises far above it's gross-out routes to becomes a genuinely charming film that kills of the cycle which gave it birth by crow baring in such outmoded ideas as plot development, character arcs, nuanced performance and old fashioned story telling.

A charming movie that will make you smile rather than guffaw.

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