Joy Ride Review

Directed by the writer of Crazy Rich Asians, and written by two writers of Family Guy, Joy Ride is a female-centric comedy that sees a group of Chinese American women going to China for raunchy misadventures.

Audrey Sullivan (Ashley Park) and Lolo Chen (Sherry Cola) have been friends since childhood having grown up in the small town of White Hills. Audrey was adopted by a white couple and has become a successful lawyer, whilst Lolo’s an aspiring artist who makes provocative pieces. When Audrey has to go to Beijing for a business deal, she recruits Lolo to be her translator. To complete the deal Audrey must go to rural China and find her birth mother.

Joy Ride has been receiving a lot of praise since it first premiered at SXSW. It wanted to be a big women-led R-Rated comedy of the summer and it has some stiff competition since Bottoms has also been getting rave reviews and I enjoyed No Hard Feelings.

Joy Ride was filled with all the risqué jokes anyone would expect from a Hollywood R-Rated comedy. There were lots of jokes revolving around sex, drug consumption, inserting drugs into all parts of the human body, and bodily fluids and bodily parts were on display. Some of these jokes were shocking and it does push the boundaries of good test. A joke involving a character’s tattoo will cause laughs and shock in equal measure.

The first line in Joy Ride showed what type of film it would be. This line was a character saying in Chinese ‘there are so many fucking white people,’ or words to that effect. This scene also included Lolo punching a boy who used a racist term and that boy getting hit by another kid on another swing. The K-Pop music video sequence felt similar to this scene from the Family Guy episode “Candy, Quahog Marshmallow.”

Joy Ride had a little bit of Hangover quality to it. That was because both films focus on a quadrate of characters going away and getting up to drunken shenanigans. There were tensions within Joy Ride’s group because they were all lumbered together. Lolo and Kat (Stephanie Hsu) disliked each other because they both see themselves as Audrey’s best friend and they make sly jabs against each other. Audrey was not thrilled that Lolo’s K-Pop-obsessed cousin, Deadeye (Sabrina Wu), was coming with them to China. Deadeye was socially awkward and seen as a weirdo. She was the Alan of the group and likely to be the breakout character of the film. It helped that Deadeye had an innocent mindset and all she wanted was to make friends.

The area where Joy Ride succeeded the most was its heart. The thrust of the film was Audrey’s character and her journey. Audrey was seen as too white by Asian people because white parents raised her. She liked white bands and singers, had a pillow saying ‘wine o’clock,’ and didn’t like Chinese food. Yet because of her ethnicity, her white colleagues saw her as Asian and refer to it constantly. Audrey didn’t know quite where she belonged, and the film followed the story adage ‘who am I?’ For a raunchy comedy, Joy Ride was able to pull some emotional gut punches because of Audrey’s discoveries and the budding friendship between the girls.

Ashley Park’s performance enhanced this personal drama. Park has often been likeable in many of her other roles and she brought that quality to Joy Ride. It was potentially controversial for Joy Ride to bring in an actress of Korean heritage to play a Chinese American character, especially after her role in Emily in Paris which was met with the same criticism. However, Joy Ride does justify its casting decision.

Joy Ride provides plenty of belly laughs due to its shocking jokes and there was enough emotion to balance things out.