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Almost as soon as they met as children, Audrey and Lolo became inseparable. They were among the few Asian Americans in a painfully homogeneous white town in the Pacific Northwest. When their first playground bully hurled a racist insult at them, Lolo landed a punch right in his face as Audrey looked on in awe. Since that fateful day, the pair stuck by each other through the rest of school, the start of their careers, and the beginnings of many bad choices. Now as an ambitious associate at a law firm, Audrey ( Ashley Park ) has the chance for a life-changing promotion when her boss sends her to China to close a major business deal, and Lolo ( Sherry Cola ), Audrey’s much more chaotic counterpart, comes along on the adventure as a translator back to their homeland. With the help of two more friends, Deadeye ( Sabrina Wu ) and Kat ( Stephanie Hsu ), the group makes it an unforgettable trip that gets dirty and deep on what identity means and how to be true to oneself. 

Making her feature debut, Adele Lim takes bold risks in her raunchy road trip comedy “Joy Ride.” The movie walks a fine line between exploring heartfelt questions about belonging and outrageous jokes played for shock value. It’s as if Lim and fellow co-writers Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao saw the antics in Malcolm D. Lee ’s “ Girls Trip ” as a challenge to top. It’s safe to say the crew in “Joy Ride” do top the outrageous factor, but whether or not it’s as effective will depend on the viewer’s stomach for bawdy humor.

Still, as uneven as the tone may wobble from Audrey’s search for her long lost mother, who gave her up for adoption, and the group hooking up with members of a traveling basketball team, there's no shortage of jokes and other comical situations to keep the awkward laughs and full-body cringes rolling along. To enhance the movie’s whirlwind melee, Paul Yee ’s cinematography transports audiences from the banality of Audrey and Lolo’s hometown to the luridly colorful animated sequences of the group’s K-Pop fantasy number and the many stops along the way, from misty country roads and expansive rivers to busy cafes and dimly lit clubs. The richness of each scene steadies the sense of whiplash from the story’s breakneck pace. 

Beyond crude humor, “Joy Ride” also pokes fun at Audrey’s identity crisis, using it as a springboard for pointed self-criticism and sharp cultural commentary. One of the movie’s sharpest sequences occurs when Audrey is fooled by a white American, a drug dealer desperate to hide her goods. She initially trusts her fellow American at the expense of sitting with other Chinese passengers and puts the group in an even more precarious situation because, as Lolo puts it, Audrey is prejudiced against people who look like her. There are many little introspective moments throughout the movie, like when they land at the Shanghai airport; Audrey notes what a different feeling it is for her to no longer be in the minority. There are even more observational jokes about missing out on a country’s traditional cuisine or speaking the language when you grew up outside the culture. These one-liners and observations throughout “Joy Ride” give a more nuanced sense of humor to the quips about random sex acts and ill-advised tattoos. 

As with many an ensemble movie, the strength is in its cast, and “Joy Ride” is no exception. Led by the central drama between Ashley Park and Sherry Cola’s characters, their relationship shifts and evolves throughout the journey, forcing them to reckon with their moments of self-discovery. Park plays the pitch-perfect straight character, the high achiever destined for greatness—with all the flaws that can come with that personality. With a deceptively calm demeanor, Cola’s character often instigates many of the movie’s problems but not in a malicious way, almost as if eternally optimistic that she will get the results she wants. Sabrina Wu’s Deadeye and Stephanie Hsu’s Kat bring even more volatility to the mix, as Deadeye’s unpredictability and deadpan expression make it tough for others to connect with her, and Kat’s sordid past comes to haunt her more than once, even as she’s trying to change her lifestyle for a Christian fiancé. 

While not everything in “Joy Ride” comes together smoothly, Lim’s movie is plenty of messy fun. It's mostly lighthearted but occasionally profound in what it says about identity and friendships. The stars of the show embrace the outrageous high jinks, enjoying the free pass to behave badly and push the envelope of raunch comedy. For all its twists and tangents, “Joy Ride” remains unapologetically true to itself and the central friendship that starts us all on our merry misadventure. 

Now playing in theaters. 

Monica Castillo

Monica Castillo is a critic, journalist, programmer, and curator based in New York City. She is the Senior Film Programmer at the Jacob Burns Film Center and a contributor to  RogerEbert.com .

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Joy Ride (2023)

Rated R for strong and crude sexual content, language throughout, drug content and brief graphic nudity.

Ashley Park as Audrey

Sherry Cola as Lolo

Stephanie Hsu as Kat

Sabrina Wu as Deadeye

David Denman as Joe Sullivan

Annie Mumolo as Mary Sullivan

Writer (story by)

• Cherry Chevapravatdumrong
• Teresa Hsiao

Cinematographer

• Nathan Matthew David

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Buckle up: This mile-a-minute 'Joy Ride' across China is a raunchy romp

Justin Chang

Deadeye (Sabrina Wu), left, Audrey (Ashley Park), Lolo (Sherry Cola) and Kat (Stephanie Hsu) in Joy Ride. Ed Araquel/Lionsgate hide caption

Deadeye (Sabrina Wu), left, Audrey (Ashley Park), Lolo (Sherry Cola) and Kat (Stephanie Hsu) in Joy Ride.

There's an early moment in Joy Ride when you'll know if you're on board with this exuberantly raunchy comedy or not. On a neighborhood playground, a white kid tells a young Chinese American girl named Lolo that the place is off-limits to "ching chongs."

Lolo then does something that maybe a lot of us who've been on the receiving end of racist bullying have fantasized about doing: She drops an F-bomb and punches him in the face. It's an extreme response, but also a hilarious and, frankly, cathartic one — a blissfully efficient counter to every stereotype of the shy, docile Asian kid.

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Lolo soon becomes best friends with Audrey, one of the only other Asian American girls in their Washington state suburb. That aside, the two could hardly be more different: Where Lolo is unapologetically crude and outspoken, Audrey is quiet and eager-to-please. And while Lolo speaks Mandarin fluently and grew up steeped in Chinese culture, Audrey is more westernized, having been adopted as a baby in China and raised by white parents.

Years later, they're still best friends and total opposites: Audrey, played by Ashley Park, is a lawyer on the fast track to making partner at her firm, while Lolo, played by Sherry Cola, is a broke artist who makes sexually explicit sculptures.

The story gets going when Audrey is sent on a business trip to Beijing to woo a potential client. Lolo comes along for fun, and to serve as Audrey's translator. Lolo also brings along her K-pop-obsessed cousin, nicknamed Deadeye, who's played by the non-binary actor Sabrina Wu.

The script, written by Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao, is heavy on contrivance: Thanks to Lolo's meddling, Audrey winds up putting her work on hold and trying to track down her birth mother. But the director Adele Lim keeps the twists and the laughs coming so swiftly that it's hard not to get swept up in the adventure.

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The comedy kicks up a notch once Audrey looks up her old college pal Kat, who's now a successful actor on a Chinese soap opera. Kat is played by Stephanie Hsu , who, after her melancholy breakout performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once , gets to show off some dazzling comedic chops here .

Like Lolo, with whom she initially butts heads, Kat has had a lot of sex, something she's trying to hide from her strictly Christian fiancé. But no one in Joy Ride holds onto their secrets, or their inhibitions, for very long. As they make their way through the scenic countryside, Audrey, Lolo, Kat and Deadeye run afoul of a drug dealer, hook up with some hunky Chinese basketball players and disguise themselves as a fledgling K-pop group for reasons too outlandish to get into here.

'Never Have I Ever' Complicates Its Asian American Characters. That's The Whole Point

In a way, Joy Ride — which counts Seth Rogen as one its producers — marks the latest step in a logical progression for the mainstream Hollywood comedy. If Bridesmaids and Girls Trip set out to prove that women could be as gleefully gross as, say, the men in The Hangover movies, this one is clearly bent on doing the same for Asian American women and non-binary characters.

Like many of those earlier models, Joy Ride boasts mile-a-minute pop-culture references, filthy one-liners and a few priceless sight gags, including some strategic full-frontal nudity. Naturally, it also forces Audrey and Lolo to confront their differences in ways that put their friendship to the test.

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If it doesn't all work, the hit-to-miss ratio is still impressively high. Joy Ride may be reworking a formula, but it does so with disarming energy and verve, plus a level of savvy about Asian culture that we still rarely see in Hollywood movies. Director Lim can stage a gross-out moment or a frisky montage as well as anyone. But she also gives the comedy a subversive edge, whether she's pushing back on lazy assumptions about Asian masculinity or — in one queasily funny scene — making clear just how racist Asians can be toward other Asians.

The actors are terrific. Deadeye is named Deadeye for their seeming lack of expression, but Wu makes this character, in some ways, the emotional glue that holds the group together. You can hear Cola's past stand-up experience in just about every one of Lolo's foul-mouthed zingers. And Park gives the movie's trickiest performance as Audrey, an insecure overachiever who, as the movie progresses, learns a lot about herself. Maybe that's a cliché, too, but Joy Ride gives it just the punch it needs.

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Follows four Asian American friends as they bond and discover the truth of what it means to know and love who you are, while they travel through China in search of one of their birth mothers... Read all Follows four Asian American friends as they bond and discover the truth of what it means to know and love who you are, while they travel through China in search of one of their birth mothers. Follows four Asian American friends as they bond and discover the truth of what it means to know and love who you are, while they travel through China in search of one of their birth mothers.

• Cherry Chevapravatdumrong
• Teresa Hsiao
• Ashley Park
• Sherry Cola
• Stephanie Hsu
• 144 User reviews
• 131 Critic reviews
• 74 Metascore
• 2 wins & 16 nominations

• Mary Sullivan

• Joe Sullivan
• Young Lolo (age 5)
• Young Audrey (age 5)

• Swinging Kid

• Audrey (age 12)

• Lolo (age 12)

• White Boy #1

• White Boy #2

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• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

The 'Joy Ride' Cast Crack One Another Up

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• Trivia Stephanie Hsu said she could not contain her laughter for several takes when Sabrina Wu 's Deadeye was explaining their nickname to Kat by putting on a blank expression.
• Goofs In the slapping game, Chao gets slapped hard by Audrey across the upper face but has a small wound on the side of his lip.

Kat : My vagina is the devil and she's here to stay!

• Connections Featured in Amanda the Jedi Show: 'BOTTOMS' is WILD | Kicked out of The Evil Dead Rise Premiere SXSW (2023)
• Soundtracks Ants Marching Written by Dave Matthews (as David J. Matthews) Performed by Dave Matthews Band Courtesy of RCA Records By arrangement with Sony Music Entertainment

User reviews 144

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• Jul 7, 2023
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• July 7, 2023 (United States)
• United Kingdom
• United States
• Official site
• Locas en apuros
• Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, 578 Carrall St, Vancouver, Canada (the location where leading character first met her friend in China)
• Lionsgate Films
• Point Grey Pictures
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $12,897,789
• Jul 9, 2023
• $15,787,674

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 35 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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Joy Ride review – a deliciously unsavoury blast of female friendship

Gross-out elements collide with sharp observations on identity as four Asian-Americans hit the road for Beijing in Adele Lim’s skit-based comedy

H orny, gutter-minded and propelled by wholesale quantities of drugs and booze: Joy Ride is the kind of uninhibited blast of bad behaviour that was, until the past decade or so, primarily the domain of young white males. Films such as Bridesmaids and Road Trip did more than simply put lipstick on a familiar formula – they tapped into the very specific tensions that result when the closed circle of lifelong female friendship is breached. Now the reins of the genre have been passed again, this time to a quartet of Asian Americans who work their way through cultural confusion, petty jealousies and most of a basketball team during a trip to China.

High-achieving lawyer Audrey (Ashley Park) was adopted from China by a white American couple and has a tenuous connection with her Asian roots (her favourite band is Mumford & Sons). Her Chinese-American childhood best friend, Lolo (Sherry Cola), is a budding artist who weaves her cultural identity into confrontationally “sex-positive” works that nobody buys. Lolo and her socially awkward non-binary cousin, Deadeye (Sabrina Wu), tag along on Audrey’s work trip to Beijing. There, they join Audrey’s college buddy Kat ( Everything Everywhere ’s Stephanie Hsu), a former wild child turned soap actor who is keen to keep her lurid past concealed, along with her incriminating crotch tattoo.

A skit-based structure gives the story a disjointed feel, and the gross-out elements (the set is awash with projectile vomit at one point) are rather tired. Still, the picture makes sharp observations about identity and belonging. And the humour is crude, ribald and deliciously unsavoury – everything you could hope for, in fact.

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‘Joy Ride’: Sex, Butt Cocaine, and Raunch-Com Representation for the Win

• By David Fear

Raunch-coms live or die by their ability to make you go “Oh my god!” or “Ewwww!” or do a spit-take that spews popcorn over whoever is unlucky enough to be sitting in front of you. So you can give it up for Joy Ride , director Adele Lim ‘s variation on the road-trip-gone-awry story that doesn’t skimp on the holy-shit moments, or gags that actually make you gag a little bit. We don’t want to spoil anything for viewers, so let’s say that there could be bags of coke that explode inside bodily orifices, at which point much horniness may ensue. You might get a close-up of a very extreme tattoo, inked in an extremely painful place to have one. Perhaps there will be a tribute to the joys of a vigorous “Devil’s Triangle” (also known as “the Eiffel Tower”). Let’s just say that the film’s R rating isn’t the only thing that’s hard here.

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The salaciousness of what happens to these messy, flawed, horny, hungover, all-too human twentysomethings plays better than the sentimentality that takes over that last third or so, which quickly goes from sweet to saccharine on its way to the inevitable equivalent of a group hug. The need for likability becomes a liability in the end. Still, Joy Ride understands how to get down and dirty, and that the healing power of raunch-coms lies in making the transgressive seem relatable, and vise versa. (Who among us has not miscounted the amount of cocaine bags we’ve shoved up our ass at one time or another?) The fact that this genre was a sandbox that once seemed off limits to the talented people now playing in it adds an extra thrill as well. If it’s the start of a beautiful, ongoing working relationship between Lim and these four, we’ll take it. Let a thousand foul-mouthed, massage-gun-abusing, middle-finger-flying flowers bloom.

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‘Joy Ride’ review: A hilariously raunchy, and genuinely moving, girls trip

Movie review.

The cheerfully raunchy and yet ultimately sweet “Joy Ride,” directed by Adele Lim, follows in some familiar footsteps. Like “The Hangover” and “Girls Trip,” it’s the tale of a group of friends who find themselves out of town on a very R-rated comedic adventure. Drugs and sex ensue, in vast and creative quantities and combinations, and yet with “Joy Ride” something else emerges as well: a surprisingly gentle story of friendship and identity.

Audrey (Ashley Park) is an Asian American adoptee, raised in a white family in a very white suburb (it’s even called “White Hills”); Lolo (Sherry Cola), who grew up in the only Asian family in town, is her best friend. They are, in the manner of all movie best friends, polar opposites: Audrey is a buttoned-up, careful lawyer; Lolo is a freewheeling artist who says exactly what she thinks. Needing a Mandarin translator for her business trip to China, Audrey invites Lolo to come along, impressing upon her that “it’s really important for me to be professional the whole time.” We can see, from the gleam in Lolo’s eye, what’s going to happen, and we’re quite happy to tag along.

Also tagging along is Lolo’s cousin Deadeye (the hilarious Sabrina Wu), whose nickname is an appropriate description of the character’s unnerving gaze, and who spends the entire movie vaguely trying to keep up with the others despite being on an entirely different wavelength. Audrey’s college friend Kat (Stephanie Hsu, of “ Everything Everywhere All At Onc e”), now a Chinese soap opera star who’s conveniently erased her own freewheeling past, completes the quartet — and the action quickly morphs from business trip to wild party to journey into Audrey’s past, as she and her friends sober up and search for her birth mother.

Along the way, we learn that all four actors are not only charmingly believable as friends but also brilliant at physical comedy (just watch Park’s swallowing of a thousand-year-old egg — her face contorting like it’s about to turn inside-out — or Hsu’s character’s desperate attempts to not be distracted by her deeply religious boyfriend’s impressive pecs), and that “Brownie Tuesday” is an excellent name for a K-pop band. Lim and co-screenwriters Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao balance the occasionally rote raunch (are movies like this contractually required to include swearing by very young and very old people?) with a story that’s genuinely moving, as Audrey learns about who she is and where she came from — with a little help from her friends.

With Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, Stephanie Hsu, Sabrina Wu. Directed by Adele Lim, from a screenplay by Lim, Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao. 92 minutes. Rated R for strong and crude sexual content, language throughout, drug content and brief graphic nudity. Opens July 6 at multiple theaters.

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‘Joy Ride’ Review: Outrageous Asian American Comedy Gives Fresh Foursome a Chance to Cut Loose

Co-stars Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, Sabrina Wu and Stephanie Hsu prove that this raunchy R-rated buddy movie could tell 'The Hangover' to hold their beer.

By Peter Debruge

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“Joy Ride” wastes no time in setting the tone, opening with a flashback to that special moment 25 years earlier when adopted Audrey and new-to-town Lolo cemented their friendship: The two girls have just met at the aptly named White Hills Park when a bully hurls a racist insult across the playground. “Fuck you!” Lolo screams back, punching the kid so hard he’ll probably need stitches. At the movie’s SXSW premiere (where Lionsgate treated the already-rowdy crowd to free alcohol), the auditorium erupted into applause at that moment, which is undeniably empowering — and arguably even necessary, considering the recent spike in hate crimes against Asian Americans.

The movie may not be “Bridesmaids”-level brilliant, but it’s got more than a couple hall-of-fame-worthy comedy set-pieces, like the memorable-enough K-pop cover of Cardi B’s “WAP,” which one-ups itself with an unforgettable reveal. What “Joy Ride” doesn’t have is a particularly strong storyline on which to hang all its how-low-can-you-go shenanigans.

An overachieving associate in an otherwise all-white law firm, Audrey — who was raised by white parents, played by David Denman and Annie Mumolo, and knows hardly anything of her Asian heritage — accepts an assignment to fly to Beijing and seal the deal with an important Chinese client. She invites Lolo along to serve as translator, disregarding the fact that her friend (a “body positive artist” who finds a way to bring most conversations around to sex) has a tendency to say and do outrageously inappropriate things in public.

“Joy Ride” recognizes that women — and especially women of color — have it tough in the workplace, where they aren’t treated as equals and are frequently objectified by their peers. But if the movie’s being political about anything, it’s showing that another underrepresented demographic can be just as extreme as your average Seth Rogen movie. With that goal in mind, “Joy Ride” features more irreverent vagina monologues than “Sausage Party” did dick jokes, which is a surely an accomplishment of some kind.

At the end of the day, what matters is how funny it is, and if you strip away the alcohol-primed SXSW audience’s laugh-at-everything response, a lot of “Joy Ride’s” humor hinges on characters shouting insults (“You look like Hello Kitty just got skull-fucked by Keropi!”) or unapologetic ethnic stereotypes (presumably excused by the source). Wu adds an element of physical comedy to the mix, functioning as the movie’s go-to scene-stealer, the way Melissa McCarthy did in “Bridesmaids,” or Awkwafina in “Crazy Rich Asians.”

The script does a decent job of spreading the laughs between the four core characters, while giving them all something to do in key scenes — whether it’s the cross-country train ride which turns into a desperate scramble to ingest or otherwise conceal a ton of drugs before the Chinese police find them, or an ambitious montage in which each of the women gets lucky with one or more members of the Chinese Basketball Association.

Reviewed at SXSW (Headliners), March 17, 2023. Running time: 95 MIN.

• Production: A Lionsgate release and presentation of a Point Grey, Red Mysterious Hippo production. Producers: Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, James Weaver, Josh Fagen, Cherry Chevapravatdumrong, Teresa Hsiao, Adele Lim. Executive producers: Daniel Clarke.
• Crew: Director: Adele Lim. Screenplay: Cherry Chevapravatdumrong & Teresa Hsiao; story: Cherry Chevapravatdumrong & Teresa Hsiao & Adele Lim. Camera: Paul Yee. Editor: Nena Hsu Erb. Music: Nathan Matthew David.
• With: Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, Stephanie Hsu, Sabrina Wu, Ronny Chieng, Meredith Hagner, David Denman, Annie Mumolo, Timothy Simons.

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Joy Ride review: Sex, drugs, and a very raunchy road movie

Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, Stephanie Hsu, and Sabrina Wu star in this predictable but charming comedy, about a group of friends on a bawdy trip through China.

Devan Coggan (rhymes with seven slogan) is a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly. Most of her personality is just John Mulaney quotes and Lord of the Rings references.

Five years ago, Adele Lim co-wrote Crazy Rich Asians , a hit rom-com that raked in more than $238 million and helped shatter misconceptions about Asian-led films in Hollywood. A sequel was quickly greenlit, but Lim later exited the film after she was reportedly offered significantly less money than her white male co-writer. Instead, she turned to a new project: a filthy road comedy about four best friends traveling through China. Now, that film has become a reality, and Lim makes her feature directorial debut with Joy Ride (out this weekend), a riotous raunch-fest that doesn't reinvent the genre but earns every bit of its hard-R rating.

Lim developed Joy Ride with friends Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao, and the film itself is a testament to friendship and the many messy forms it can take. Broadway alum Ashley Park stars as Audrey, a buttoned-up overachiever who, as a child, was adopted from China by white American parents. Young Audrey became fast friends with Lolo (Sherry Cola), the only other Asian girl in their blindingly white suburb. (When a kid on the playground hurls a racial slur, the tiny Lolo decks him in the face, a shocking but hilarious moment that sets the tone for the chaos to come.) Decades later, Audrey and Lolo are still inseparable, even as Audrey has grown into a prim lawyer, while Lolo is a lawless, sex-positive artist crafting lewd sculptures in Audrey's backyard.

When Audrey heads to China for an international business trip, Lolo volunteers to tag along as her interpreter, accompanied by her awkward, K-pop-obsessed cousin Deadeye (nonbinary actor Sabrina Wu). Later, they're joined by Audrey's college roommate Kat ( Everything Everywhere All at Once star Stephanie Hsu ), who's found fame as a soapy TV star in China. What starts as a giddy vacation quickly goes off the rails, as Ashley tries to close a deal with an intimidating business contact (Ronny Chieng). To prove that she's a dedicated family woman, she reluctantly decides to track down her birth mother in China, triggering — you guessed it — even more chaos.

Joy Ride isn't the first bawdy, R-rated comedy to hit theaters this summer: No Hard Feelings premiered in June, starring Jennifer Lawrence as a 30something hired to flirt with a recent high school grad. But where No Hard Feelings dipped a toe into raunch, Joy Ride cannonballs straight in. Vomit is spewed, drugs are shoved in bodily orifices, threesomes are had with professional basketball players. (Baron Davis has a role as himself.) At one point, having lost their passports, the four friends pose as a fake K-pop group, complete with a hilariously absurd performance of Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion's " WAP " (ending with a jaw-droppingly filthy finale).

The four leads have an easy chemistry. Hsu, a recent Oscar nominee for Everything Everywhere, shows off her comic chops as the reluctantly celibate Kat, while Wu's Deadeye lives up to their name, delivering emotionless and deeply hilarious reaction shots. Cola is also a charming hurricane of chaos, a lascivious foil to Park's strait-laced Audrey.

Gross gags and chaotic debauchery aren't exactly new, and Joy Ride shares plenty of DNA with other female-led comedies like 2011's Bridesmaids and 2017's Girls Trip . Joy Ride is a welcome addition to the genre, if not a particularly subversive one: Lim raises some thoughtful questions about Asian-American identity and the struggle to belong, but any deeper ideas are overshadowed by nudity and absurdist jokes. Also, not every gag works. (Please, a moratorium on scenes where someone accidentally does cocaine!)

The emotional third act is particularly predictable, trading slapstick for sentimentality and leaning a little too heavily on "friendship saves the day!" cliches. But even among all the sex jokes and vulgar one-liners, Joy Ride boasts a real beating heart. It's a raunchy (and occasionally familiar) ride, but it's well worth the trip. Grade: B

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• Ashley Park goes for a wild Joy Ride in first look at Adele Lim's R-rated comedy

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Movie Review: ‘Joy Ride’ is a cheerfully gross-out comedy that soars, thanks to a terrific cast

This image released by Lionsgate shows Sabrina Wu as Deadeye, from left, Ashley Park as Audrey, Sherry Cola as Lolo, and Stephanie Hsu as Kat, in a scene from “Joy Ride.” (Ed Araquel/Lionsgate via AP)

This image released by Lionsgate shows Sabrina Wu as Deadeye, from left, Sherry Cola as Lolo, Stephanie Hsu as Kat, and Ashley Park as Audrey in a scene from “Joy Ride.” (Ed Araquel/Lionsgate via AP)

This image released by Lionsgate shows Stephanie Hsu as Kat, from left, Sabrina Wu as Deadeye, Ashley Park as Audrey, and Sherry Cola as Lolo in a scene from “Joy Ride.” (Ed Araquel/Lionsgate via AP)

This image released by Lionsgate shows Stephanie Hsu as Kat, from left, Sherry Cola as Lolo, Ashley Park as Audrey, and Sabrina Wu as Deadeye in a scene from “Joy Ride.” (Ed Araquel/Lionsgate via AP)

This image released by Lionsgate shows Sabrina Wu as Deadeye, from left, Ashley Park as Audrey, Stephanie Hsu as Kat and Sherry Cola as Lolo in a scene from “Joy Ride.” (Ed Araquel/Lionsgate via AP)

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If you’re like me, there comes a moment of truth in raunchy film comedies when you decide whether to fully join in the fun — or ride it out on the fence.

It often comes in a key early comic scene. Can they pull it off? If so you’ll be putty in their hands for two hours, ready to chuckle along no matter how gross it gets (think of that bridal dress fitting in “Bridesmaids.”) If not, you’ll shuffle uncomfortably on the sidelines, feeling rather like a prude.

In first-time director Adele Lim’s ebullient, chaotic, nothing’s-too-gross-if-it’s funny road comedy “Joy Ride,” that moment came for me when watching Ashley Park swallow a disgusting concoction in a drinking contest, pretending all’s fine as her insides erupt. Expert comic chops cannot be faked. Park had me from that guzzle (and cemented it later with her Gollum impression.)

Yet the impressive thing about “Joy Ride,” a comedy that more than earns its R rating — folks, it features a vaginal tattoo in full-frontal glory — is that there are similar moments for each of the superb quartet of actors that make this film buzz along.

Park, playing an ambitious and uptight lawyer, has the trickiest job, being funny while remaining the narrative center, and tasked with making us not only laugh but cry. But each of her co-stars — comic Sherry Cola as a cheerfully profane, struggling artist, Sabrina Wu as her awkward, K-pop obsessed cousin, and a fabulous Stephanie Hsu as a soap opera diva — pulls their weight in comedy gold. A viewer’s gross-out tolerance may vary; what unites is the laughter. Funny how simple it is when that works.

We first meet Audrey as a child in suburban Washington state, the adopted daughter of white parents who delightedly welcome Lolo, from a Chinese family, as a playmate for their daughter. When the bolder Lolo makes mincemeat of a white racist bully in the park, the girls launch a lifelong friendship.

Back to the present. Audrey, a lawyer so competitive she demolishes her boss at squash (he keeps claiming he’s “an ally” while tossing off racially insensitive asides), is living in the same hometown — not for nothing is it called White Hills — and Lolo is nearby. Audrey’s boss promises a big promotion and a move to Los Angeles if she can seal an important deal in Beijing.

Problem is, Audrey doesn’t speak Mandarin, so she enlists Lolo as a translator. As far as Lolo’s concerned, Audrey’s problems run deeper than her lack of language; she lacks any connection to her Asian roots. What a perfect time, Lolo thinks, for Audrey to make inroads. Maybe she can even find her birth mother.

In Beijing, Audrey survives a brutal night of competitive drinking with her potential client, who likes her until he finds out she has little connection to China. Suddenly, in an effort to save the big deal, Audrey and company are off on a road trip to find Audrey’s birth mother. This includes Deadeye, Lolo’s cousin, and Kat, Audrey’s former college roommate, now a very sexually frustrated soap star. Hsu, after her breakout performance in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” shows huge comic potential here.

The plot — outlandish and sometimes contrived as it is — offers plenty of room for comic possibility. And more. Screenwriters Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao explore themes of identity, assimilation and anti-Asian racism both overt and casual — and within the Asian community itself.

When, for example, the foursome hops on a train, they search for a compartment with people who seem “safe.” Audrey rejects a number of Chinese travelers but settles happily in with a blonde American woman — who turns out to be a drug dealer. The scene involves hiding copious amounts of cocaine in ungodly places, but also reflects on Audrey’s subconscious racism.

Kicked off the train in the middle of the countryside but rescued by a basketball team (yeah, just go with it), the foursome has a ridiculously raunchy night (sorry for overusing the word, but “raunch” says it so well) before getting marooned again. The comic energy reaches its apotheosis in a K-pop number whose lyrics we cannot repeat here. The group has been forced to disguise itself as a band so they can get to Korea without passports. (Why? Too complicated). Their song is so overtly sexual you might find yourself blushing — except, as usual, the laughter is what wins out.

Even when the above-mentioned X-rated tattoo is staring you in the face. Which it is.

And then we pivot, dramatically, when Audrey’s trip to see her birth mom has an unexpected result. And suddenly, the laughter turns to tears. I know those were sniffles I heard at my screening, and not just mine. How did THAT happen, we wonder.

Well, it’s easy: Park earned it. They all did.

“Joy Ride,” a Lionsgate release, has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America “for strong and crude sexual content, language throughout, drug content and brief graphic nudity.” Running time: 95 minutes. Three stars out of four.

MPAA definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Review: The exuberantly rude ‘Joy Ride’ gives its stars the raunch-pad they deserve

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A good gross-out gag is hardly a novelty in mainstream comedies, but there’s one in “Joy Ride” that made my stomach almost — almost — flip in solidarity. It happens in a Beijing nightclub where Audrey (Ashley Park), an American lawyer wooing a potential client (Ronny Chieng), is invited, or rather pressured, to enjoy a well-known local delicacy with a slurpable twist. “Are thousand-year-old-egg cocktails really a thing?” I wondered in ignorance and horror, thinking of all the dark, gelatinous egg chunks I’d left in my own congee bowls as a kid, despite my parents’ insistence that I should eat them and like them. Would a shot of liquor have made them more palatable? I don’t know; I’ll never know. But in that moment, Audrey’s revulsion, to say nothing of her bad-Asian guilt, were very much my own.

You might guess some of what happens next. Audrey projectile-vomits all over the client-to-be, enduring the kind of squirmy ritual humiliation that awaits many an insecure, tightly wound comedy protagonist. But “Joy Ride,” an amusingly rude and high-spirited romp from the debuting director Adele Lim (a co-writer on “Crazy Rich Asians” ), has a way of turning predictable story beats into spiky, revealing cultural distinctions.

You’ve seen a lot of strait-laced overachievers learn to lighten up and cut loose on-screen. You’ve seen fewer like Audrey, who was adopted in China and raised in America by white parents, and who’s now visiting her birth country for the first time with friends who are more laid-back, in part, because they’re better versed in the culture and language than she is. (“I’m just a garbage American who only speaks English,” Audrey admits in a moment of drunken confession.) And so the group dynamics are rooted in the usual differences of temperament and personality, yes, but also in nuances of personal upbringing and diasporic experience. This journey really does take Audrey on a journey.

The closest of her traveling companions is Lolo (Sherry Cola), her best pal since they first met as kids in a predominantly white Washington state suburb. A disarmingly funny childhood prologue — there’s a racist slur, a choice expletive and some swift, brutal playground fisticuffs — establishes the characters and their inseparably complementary dynamic. Lolo is the brassy, foul-mouthed, uninhibited one; she grows up to be an artist specializing in sexually explicit sculptures, many of which riff cleverly on the Chinese culture she knows intimately well. The more responsible Audrey, always eager to please and to prove herself, is an attorney in the fast lane, a lone Asian American female powerhouse surrounded by white men in suits (including Timothy Simons as her boss, serving up a sly caricature of performative allyship).

Lolo strengthens Audrey’s pluck and confidence; Audrey gives Lolo encouragement and a roof over her head. And so it’s unsurprising, if ill-advised, when Audrey brings Lolo along as her personal translator on a high-stakes overseas business trip. It’s also the kind of easy-to-swallow, conveniently friendship-testing contrivance that abounds in Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao’s script, including Audrey’s decision to spend her high-stakes overseas business trip searching for her long-lost birth mother. Tagging along for the ride is Lolo’s non-binary cousin (Sabrina Wu), a K-pop obsessive who’s nicknamed Deadeye for their combination of affectless stares and goofy grins. And then there’s Audrey’s old college pal Kat ( Stephanie Hsu ), an actor with a popular Chinese soap-opera gig and a super-Christian fiancé (Desmond Chiam) from whom she’s trying to hide her long list of past sexual partners.

Hsu received an Oscar nomination earlier this year for her melancholy supporting turn in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” a role that only moderately prepares you for her welcome display of randy comic gusto and killer timing here. She and Cola supply much of the story’s comic energy early on, some of it predicated on Kat and Lolo’s mutual loathing and some of it on their raging libidos. The raucousness proves infectious as Audrey, Lolo, Kat and Deadeye embark on a wild trek through the Chinese countryside, becoming reluctant mules for a drug dealer (Meredith Hagner) one minute, and hooking up with some hunky professional athletes the next.

Along the way, Audrey’s most shortsighted assumptions — the way she shies away from the locals she can’t understand and gravitates toward the white English speakers she occasionally encounters — are productively and amusingly upended. Lim and her writers have a knack for casual subversion, whether they’re flooding the screen with ripped Asian male torsos or staging a bubble-gum-hued K-pop-style Cardi B cover. Or, in a moment that will cause heads in every theater to nod in unison, suggesting that few people are more racist, in the end, than Asians are toward other Asians.

Beneath all the sexual-scatological shenanigans, the cocaine enemas and the cunnilingual injuries, there’s a familiar, even dutiful representational strategy at play. If comedies like “Bridesmaids” and “Girls Trip” were lauded, justly if somewhat reductively, for suggesting that women (white and Black, respectively) could be as funny and hard-R raunchy as their slovenly white-male counterparts in, say, “The Hangover” movies, “Joy Ride” means to accomplish something similarly liberating for Asian American female and gender-nonconforming characters everywhere. It also means to tear away the stereotypical veil of docility and propriety in which such characters have too often been presented, to the extent that they’ve been presented at all.

None of which, however well-intended, makes the movie a success by default. To love rude, regressive humor is to know there’s a danger in reducing it to a crude competitive sport or, worse, a declaration of intent. But while “Joy Ride” has its borderline-mechanical moments — a vigorous sex-a-thon montage is both amusing and overly calculated — it moves too swiftly and good-humoredly, for the most part, to fall into this trap for long. It also has actors who, even when cleaving to their characters’ broadest outlines or going for obvious, outlandish laughs, simply possess too much warmth and emotional vibrancy to ever seem one-note.

The joy of “Joy Ride” is certainly there in the sexual repartee, the caustic insults and the foul-mouthed zingers, all of which Lim paces with nary-a-wasted-moment velocity. But it’s also there in the warmly inviting smile that steals across Cola’s face as her Lolo talks about sex as a universal ideal, a source of affirmation rather than shame. Or the way Wu’s face lights up when Deadeye talks about why they like K-pop so much, since it’s the rare thing that actually likes them back. Park, in some ways, gives the trickiest performance as Audrey, the straight woman here in every sense: She has to singlehandedly carry “Joy Ride” through its inevitable, conventional tonal shift from sassy to sentimental, from fallout to reconciliation. She’s egg-ceptional.

'Joy Ride'

Rating: R, for strong and crude sexual content, language throughout, drug content and brief graphic nudity Running time: 1 hour, 32 minutes Playing: Starts July 7 in general release

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Joy Ride Review

It's been a good few years since we’ve had a truly outlandish group-vacation comedy, one that has reached the scatological heights of Bridesmaids — but Joy Ride is a worthy successor. No bodily fluid, orifice or taboo is left untouched in Adele Lim’s audacious directorial debut, and though it may test your limit for gross-out humour, the film engages with more than just comedy. Come for the laughs, stay for the thoughtful deconstruction of Asian identity against a world that wants to categorise people of colour in rudimentary boxes.

As the only two Asian kids in the white suburb of White Hills, Seattle, Audrey (Ashley Park) and Lolo (Sherry Cola) become fast friends when the latter punches the local playground racist. That connection based on mutual protection carries into their adult lives: Lolo is a struggling, body-positive artist living out of Audrey’s garage; Audrey has an important work trip to China that promises a cushy promotion at her law firm, and brings Lolo along as her translator and support system. Also joining the ride are Lolo’s cousin Deadeye (Sabrina Wu), an earnest K-pop stan nicknamed for their vacant stare, and Audrey’s college bestie Kat (Stephanie Hsu), a local celebrity in China for her starring role in a costume drama.

Their holiday gets uprooted when Lolo encourages Audrey, who was adopted from China, to find her birth mother. On the surface, Joy Ride is not so distant from this year’s Return To Seoul , the superb drama about an adoptee’s struggle to reconcile her heritage with the person she’s become — except that Lim’s film is bolstered by a heaping sprinkle of threesomes, vomit, and cocaine rammed up arseholes. The Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg-produced film initially coasts along on provocatively uproarious set-pieces — a frantic run-in with a drug dealer, an aggressive sexcapade with a touring basketball team — though not all of it works. An improvised, candy-coloured rendition of ‘WAP’ falls flat before it has even started.

Establishes its own identity by filtering insightful commentary through refreshingly crude humour.

Being an entirely Asian-led comedy, Joy Ride inherently has more baggage than the whiter raunch-fests of past (think The Hangover ). There’s a silent mission statement in Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao’s layered screenplay: to defy the tired tropes surrounding Asian women, who are too often portrayed as docile, innocent submissives. That description, rightly, could never fit Audrey, Lolo, Kat and Deadeye. (The latter, while never outright stated, is suggested to be non-binary.) They have sex, take copious substances, and run rampant across China and beyond. There’s something liberating in just simply watching these people be explicitly themselves.

It helps that the cast is so infectiously charming. Park dutifully plays the straight-woman to her more eclectic troupe of besties. And Hsu is just as much a stand-out here as she was in Everything Everywhere All At Once , this time playing a horndog actor feigning celibacy for her Bible-thumping fiancé. She’s heroically game to wholly embody the ways the film tests her character’s frustrated libido.

As with Crazy Rich Asians , which counts Lim as a co-writer, Joy Ride unfurls and expands the nuances of Asian identity. The jokes strike a fine line between specificity and universality; such is the case when Audrey attempts to impress an important client by chugging down a century egg. She bristles at accusations that she’s assimilated so well that she’s “basically white”, but for all the jabs aimed her way for her love of Mumford & Sons and Succession , Audrey’s “whiteness” speaks to the varying shades of the diasporic experience. There’s an uneasy friction, too: the isolation Audrey feels for not speaking the language or appreciating the food — like misunderstanding the inside joke everyone but you laughs at.

That, in turn, introduces an inverted dynamic into the group. Audrey, a perennial over-achiever who can easily code-switch at an office squash match with her all-white colleagues, straggles behind her Chinese-speaking friends in her own motherland.

For all of Joy Ride ’s coked-up debauchery, that all fades away in a sentimental third act that’s earned, if conventional. Lim’s film faithfully fits the template of Bridesmaids and the like, but it establishes its own identity by filtering insightful commentary through refreshingly crude humour. Clichés be damned: it’s a joy.

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Common sense media reviewers.

All-Asian cast is brilliantly funny in raunchy road movie.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Underlying the raunchy humor are positive messages

Each main character is presented as an individual

Almost the entire cast consists of Asian actors; t

Violence is infrequent and comic. A young girl pun

Celebrates sex as something "beautiful" and an imp

Cursing is frequent and usually for comic effect:

Some characters are wealthy and are seen with limo

Characters drink frequently, including downing sho

Parents need to know that Joy Ride is a crude, hilarious road movie with strong language, sexual humor, drinking, and drugs. It follows a group of four friends -- Audrey (Ashley Park), Lolo (Sherry Cola), Deadeye (Sabrina Wu), and Kat (Stephanie Hsu) -- as they travel across Asia in search of one of their…

Positive Messages

Underlying the raunchy humor are positive messages about the importance of friends, the value of emotional support, and the way cultural identity is connected with your inner sense of self. Sincerity, perseverance, kindness, and respect are all important themes.

Positive Role Models

Each main character is presented as an individual with unique hopes and dreams. Each also has enough screen time to make viewers empathize and root for them. Audrey is the film's main character, but Deadeye is the most vulnerable, and the one who's most honest about their emotions. Characters grow, change, and become more fully realized and emotionally mature over the course of the movie.

Diverse Representations

Almost the entire cast consists of Asian actors; the narrative is built around a twenty-something Asian American woman who's far from a stereotype and is presented as a full person with an identity and goals. An adoptee storyline is central to the film, and the cast is diverse in terms of age, ethnicity, gender expression, sexual identity, and body type. Co-star Sabrina Wu is non-binary; Stephanie Hsu and Sherry Cola are also out LGBTQ+ actors. Director Adele Lim is Malaysian American and co-writers include Thai American and Chinese American writers.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Violence is infrequent and comic. A young girl punches a boy on the nose for calling them and their friend a racist name.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Celebrates sex as something "beautiful" and an important part of your identity and happiness. Many scenes feature explicit talk about sex (including descriptions of acts and body parts), as well as sex scenes in which characters are seen moving in rhythm and making suggestive noises. A character has group sex that they refer to afterward in positive terms; another has consequence-free casual sex that they also feel good about. Brief scene of comic nudity in which a character's vagina is seen from the front, covered with a large tattoo. Also a brief glimpse of buttocks.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Cursing is frequent and usually for comic effect: "f--k," "f---ing," "s--t," "ass," and "bitch." Vulgar sexual language ("d--k," "p---y"), and racist language (a boy calls two girls "ching chongs").

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Some characters are wealthy and are seen with limousines, private jets, and other trappings of wealth.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Characters drink frequently, including downing shots, which leads to drunkenness, throwing up, and making clumsy mistakes. In an extended scene, characters are trapped on a train with drugs and must hide them; they do this by gulping pills of molly, snorting lines of cocaine, and hiding them in their rectums. One character puts cocaine in their rectum in a baggie that later explodes; they seemingly suffer no consequences beyond experiencing a fantastic high.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Joy Ride is a crude, hilarious road movie with strong language, sexual humor, drinking, and drugs. It follows a group of four friends -- Audrey (Ashley Park), Lolo (Sherry Cola), Deadeye (Sabrina Wu), and Kat ( Stephanie Hsu ) -- as they travel across Asia in search of one of their birth mothers. The movie is raunchy but upbeat, with positive themes of friendship, identity, and the value of connections to others. Sexual content is frequent and mature. It includes group sex between a woman and two men (moaning, rhythmic movements), and there's lots of talk about sex and bodies, especially from one character who's proud of her active, positive sex life. There are also scenes in which characters vomit after drinking and one in which they hide drugs from law enforcement by taking cocaine and molly, as well as hiding it in an orifice. Cursing includes variants of "f--k," as well as sexual language like "p---y" and "d--k." One character punches another in the face for saying something racist. The cast is mainly composed of East Asian actors and has diversity in terms of age, ethnicity, sexual identity, gender expression, and body type. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 2 parent reviews

Verbal Porn

Sorry i lied, what's the story.

Audrey (Ashley Park) and Lolo (Sherry Cola) were the only Chinese kids in their town growing up, and they relied on each other for staunch support. Now adults, they're still best friends, with Lolo even living in Audrey's garage while she tries to jump-start her art career. But their friendship is tested when Audrey must travel to China for business and decides to search for her birth mother, bringing along Lolo, her awkward cousin Deadeye (Sabrina Wu), and college bestie Kat ( Stephanie Hsu ). During their wild JOY RIDE, the four encounter vengeful drug dealers, horny basketball players, and dismissive grandmas.

Is It Any Good?

Unapologetically raunchy, hilarious, and full of sweet moments and unexpected heart, this film's vibe and mission are perhaps made most clear by its original working title: The Joy F--k Club. Like the highly respected film The Joy Luck Club , Joy Ride 's cast consists almost entirely of actors of Asian descent. But unlike the 1993 film, this one features a scene in which a lead character conceals cocaine from law enforcement by jamming it in her rectum. In a movie with less fizzy humor and genuine emotion, such a scene would be unbearably crass. But here, it's all part of the silly, occasionally surreal, and ultimately affecting adventure. It's also just one of many comedic scenes that could have easily gone south in less capable hands. In addition, the serious moments that tackle racism, identity, and the inestimable value of supportive friends bring a gravity that keeps the audience invested.

Wu's Deadeye has some of the most powerful emotional moments, such as a scene in which they cop to being "weird" and "socially awkward," but even so, they're still pained by rejection. "I don't have any friends," Deadeye admits, and Audrey, who had always looked down on Deadeye, is visibly moved by the revelation and their emotional honesty. There are other scenes that will get viewers misty, like when characters admit their fears and limitations and friends dole out hugs and support. There are also knowing cultural gags, such as when a rich businessman promises a party will have "Gift bags, oranges, Teslas, and Bitcoin." It all adds up to a deliriously enjoyable ride that audiences will want to go on again and again.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how Joy Ride portrays drinking and drug use . Were there any real-life consequences? Did the movie judge those used substances? How could you tell?

How is sex depicted? Did you think the graphic sex talk was meant to be realistic or shocking? What's the difference? What values were imparted?

Talk about the strong language used in the movie. Did it seem necessary or excessive? What did it contribute to the movie?

The movie is a Hollywood studio feature built around an almost all-Asian/Asian American cast. Why is that notable? Why does representation matter in media?

How did the characters defy stereotypes, both in terms of ethnicity and gender? What made Audrey a positive female character? Why is it important for kids to see a wide range of behavior from both genders in the media they consume?

Movie Details

• In theaters : July 7, 2023
• On DVD or streaming : September 12, 2023
• Cast : Ashley Park , Stephanie Hsu , Sherry Cola
• Director : Adele Lim
• Inclusion Information : Female directors, Asian directors, Female actors, Asian actors, Bisexual actors, Queer actors, Female writers, Asian writers
• Studio : Lionsgate
• Genre : Comedy
• Topics : Friendship
• Character Strengths : Integrity , Perseverance , Teamwork
• Run time : 95 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : strong and crude sexual content, language throughout, drug content and brief graphic nudity
• Last updated : February 26, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

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Joy Ride Movie Review: A Naughty & Hilarious Laugh-Out-Loud Comedy

July 17, 2023 By Ashley Leave a Comment

A wickedly naughty road trip adventure, Joy Ride is a genuinely funny film that will make you laugh-out-loud while tugging at some heartstrings. 

Joy Ride Movie Review

Growing up as the only Chinese American girls in their town, Audrey (Ashley Park) and Lolo (Sherry Cola) have been best friends since childhood. Audrey, who was adopted from China by white parents, grew up to be an overachiever on her way to becoming a big shot lawyer. Lolo on the other hand, is a free spirited artist who is the opposite of Audrey in almost every way. When Audrey is asked to travel to China by her firm to close a deal, Lolo goes to act as her translator, bringing along her cousin Deadeye (Sabrina Wu). Once in China, they meet up with Audrey's college best friend Kat (Stephanie Hsu), a famous actress who pretends to be someone she's not. Although this is a work trip for Audrey, things go from professional to rowdy in ways none of them could have expected. 

Director Adele Lim along with co-writers Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao have created a wickedly fun road trip film with a great ensemble cast. This is a movie that isn't afraid to be both raunchy and heartfelt, as it goes from one insane situation to the next all while tackling racial microaggressions, identity, and the changing landscape of adult friendships. Thankfully, it more than earns its R rating without getting so distracted by being over the top that it forgets to tell a story. 

Joy Ride is both naughty and dirty as it is touching and sincere. It Is a story that on the surface is chaotic and wild but underneath is also personal. Lim, Hsiao, and Chevapravatdumrong handled it all beautifully, pulling back on the rowdy moments to allow the heart of the film shine at just the right moments. This film has a lot to say about friendship, acceptance, identity, and the microagressions non-white Americans face everyday. Having grown up in a white household, Audrey has always felt like an outsider everywhere she goes, even within the Asian community. Whereas Lolo knows exactly who she is and doesn't really care what anyone else expects of her. It's Lolo's fiercely unapologetic side that helps Audrey learn what accepting yourself truly means. As Audrey struggles with her identity as things surface from her past, the filmmakers give her room to explore these new aspects of her life. The story ensures that these experiences add to instead of subtract from her sense of self. 

Story aside, the cast chemistry is great, with each playing off the other for endlessly funny results. In the first act of the film, Audrey is clearly uptight about everything, her job, her love life, and even her free time. Everything is about hustling for her. Her strict rules for herself and her friends break down throughout the film, feeding the conflict which ultimately resolves in a predictable way. Not that that is a bad thing, in fact it is nice to see female friendships that are allowed to travel the emotional spectrum while still supporting one another. This is what real friendship looks like and road trips bring out the best and worst in all of us…plus or minus the hard drugs and intimate encounters of course. Park does an incredible job with balancing her character's complex personality and reactions to situations. 

The rest of the cast is equally dynamic. Cola delivers Lolo's line with ease, never missing a beat. Whether she is making a face at Park's Audrey or hysterically mimicking bedroom sounds, Cola is incredible. Kudos to her scene partners for not ruining every take with laughter. I would've struggled. Wu is another standout as Deadeye who is unpredictable in the best ways. Finally there is Hsu who continues to show how amazing of an actress she is. Watching her character's lies come to surface as her composure slowly breaks down is one of the biggest treats of the whole film. Hsu is a scene stealer in a cast of scene stealers. 

There are several standout set pieces that will have audiences in tears from laughter. I'm sure I missed a few things because I could not stop laughing. One of the wildest scenes involves a train, a random American drug dealer, and some creative ways to keep from getting arrested. Then there is a dance number that doubles as a music video with some erm revealing moments. Not to mention some basketball players who get caught up in the outrageousness of this work trip. 

Ultimately, Joy Ride is a must-watch movie for any fan of the R-rated comedy genre. This one's for the girls who have known each other for years, ride or die best friends, or anyone looking for a rowdy good time at the theater. It's hilarious and naughty, unashamed to go there, while still delivering a resonating story about friendship and acceptance. Set up as a standalone film, I wouldn't mind going on another joy ride with these women. 

Joy Ride is now in theaters. The film is rated R for strong and crude sexual content, language throughout, drug content and brief graphic nudity with a runtime of 95 minutes.

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'Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga' pits Chris Hemsworth against Anya Taylor-Joy. It's a blast

Some movies you feel more than just watch.

“Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” is one of those. I watched it in a theater with the volume cranked up seemingly as high as it could go, and I recommend it — when anyone stomps their foot on a gas pedal, which happens often, you feel the horsepower blasting through the speakers.

But George Miller’s latest installment in one of the more creative franchises ever also makes you feel in non-tactile ways. By the time the film has throttled its way to its conclusion, linking it to “ Mad Max: Fury Road ,” for which it serves as a prequel, it will make you feel pretty alarmed about the state of things. This is a world that’s going to hell, if it hasn’t gotten there already. Take notes and act accordingly. Maybe it’s not too late.

What is 'Furiosa' about?

We meet Furiosa, who grows up to be Charlize Theron in “Fury Road,” as a child here, played by Alyla Browne (who is outstanding), out picking fruit. Like the other films, this one is set in the Australian outback, ravaged by apocalypse. But she and her family live in an oasis of sorts, The Green Land, a secret from the rest of the world and its arid miseries.

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She is abducted by the lunatic thugs who seem to populate this world, and a riveting chase scene, with her mother in pursuit, ensues.

'Mad Max: Fury Road review: George Miller never lets up on the gas

It’s fabulous. And we learn a lot about Furiosa along the way — like when she chews her way through the fuel line of the motorcycle her abductor is riding. Eventually, though, she winds up in the hands of Dementus (Chris Hemsworth, with a big fake nose but recognizable Thor-like abs and arms), a dim-witted but showy leader who rules a bunch that are even more dim-witted than he is. (What’s the old saying? I don’t have to be faster than the tiger. I just have to be faster than you.)

Furiosa is an innocent girl when she's captured. This is the story of how she becomes the hardened, one-armed, head-shaved warrior in “Fury Road.” It involves a lot of patience on her part, as well as subterfuge and planning, but mostly it’s about hate — searing hate, toward Dementus. It is a powerful motivation.

Eventually, Furiosa winds up in the Citadel, delivered over to Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) and his moronic sons Rictus Erectus (Nathan Jones) and Scrotus (Josh Helman). (Miller is positively inspired in his choice of names and costumes — Black Thumb, Toe Jam and the Organic Mechanic are a few of my favorites.)

Anya Taylor-Joy plays Furiosa

As Furiosa grows older eventually Anya Taylor-Joy takes over the role, in a seamless transition. At this point she is a hardened warrior, and a committed loner, tough she finds a somewhat kindred spirit in Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke), driver of the trucks that haul supplies. We see the iconic War Rig from “Fury Road” built from the ground up (in time-lapse photography no less), and eventually Miller leads us to the story points that lead into the action of the 2015 film.

Ah, action. There is so much of it — aside from the goofy malapropisms Dementus is given to, there isn’t a lot of dialogue. Action is the language these people speak. High-octane action. (They probably couldn’t hear each other talk anyway.) Like in “Fury Road,” the stunts are spectacular. This truly is what a summer movie looks like — and yes, feels like.

“The question is,” Dementus asks, “do you have what it takes to make it epic?” Miller answers that question with a resounding yes.

'Furiosa' 4 stars

Great ★★★★★ Good ★★★★

Fair ★★★ Bad ★★ Bomb ★

Director: George Miller.

Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Alyla Browne.

Rating: R for sequences of strong violence, and grisly images.

How to watch: In theaters Friday, May 24.

Reach Goodykoontz at   [email protected] . Facebook:   facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm . X:   @goodyk . Subscribe to   the weekly movies newsletter .

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Joyride (1977) Streaming: Watch & Stream Online via Amazon Prime Video

Joyride (1977) is an independent road flick following three young adults on a journey from California to Alaska. Their dream of becoming salmon fishermen quickly fades as they face dead-end jobs and dwindling resources. The film takes a dramatic turn when they encounter a conflict with pipeline workers, leading to a reckless escape and an uncertain future.

Here’s how you can watch and stream Joyride (1977) via streaming services such as Amazon Prime Video.

Is Joyride (1977) available to watch via streaming?

Yes, Joyride (1977) is available to watch via streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

Three restless young adults, fueled by dreams of easy money, ditch their dead-end California jobs for a wild Alaskan adventure. Scott, Suzie, and John aim to strike it rich as salmon fishermen, but the harsh reality of Alaska quickly sets in. Forced to take on odd jobs, their frustration mounts until a chance encounter with the oil pipeline throws them into a desperate situation.

The 1977 Joyride features Desi Arnaz Jr. and Robert Carradine as Scott and John, with Melanie Griffith playing Suzie.

Watch Joyride (1977) streaming via Amazon Prime Video

Joyride (1977) is available to watch on Amazon Prime Video.

Amazon Prime Video boasts a robust documentary collection, featuring thought-provoking pieces on historical events, scientific discoveries, and current social issues.

You can watch via Amazon Prime Video by following these steps:

Go to  Amazon Prime Video

Select ‘Sign in’ and ‘Create your Amazon account’

Sign up for a Prime Video membership:

$14.99 per month or $139 per year with an Amazon Prime membership

$8.99 per month for a standalone Prime Video membership

Amazon Prime is the online retailer’s paid service that provides fast shipping and exclusive sales on products, so the membership that includes both this service and Prime Video is the company’s most popular offering. However, you can also opt to subscribe to Prime Video separately.

The official synopsis is as follows:

“Joyride is the story of young people on a journey of self-discovery, friendship, and love as they go through teenage life on their way to young adulthood. Directed by Mac Alejandre, Joyride is a fresh, touching, sometimes heartbreaking, and often amusing look at teenage life. And because it is more than just about being teens, Joyride tackles the story of different young people and their families who managed to ride along with the drama of life. In 2005-2006, the series was re-aired on GMA Pinoy TV worldwide. From October 20, 2011, until December 29, 2011, the series was re-aired on GMA Life TV worldwide.”

NOTE: The streaming services listed above are subject to change. The information provided was correct at the time of writing.

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The post Joyride (1977) Streaming: Watch & Stream Online via Amazon Prime Video appeared first on ComingSoon.net - Movie Trailers, TV & Streaming News, and More .

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Grab Your ‘Ride or Die’ and Get Tickets For the New ‘Bad Boys’ Movie

Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett are back in action.

The Big Picture

• New Bad Boys film Ride or Die stars Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, with tickets officially on sale.
• Film is the fourth installment in the buddy-cop franchise, marking the duo's return to the big screen.
• Impressive ensemble cast includes Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig, Ioan Gruffudd, and Joe Pantoliano.

As marketing has been picking up with new posters and teasers over the last several weeks, the latest film in the Bad Boys franchise just opened things up in a big way. Fandango released a new teaser featuring stars Will Smith and Martin Lawrence to announce that Bad Boys: Ride or Die tickets are officially on sale now. The film arrives in theaters on June 7, and will be playing in special formats such as IMAX, Dolby, and 4DX. The newly released promo shows Smith and Lawrence standing behind a nice pool (possibly in the Bad Boys' home of Miami ) holding ticket guns and blasting ticket slips into the air.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die is the fourth film in the buddy-cop franchise starring Smith and Lawrence, and will be their return to the big screen for the first time since 2020. The pair teamed up for their first two films in 1995 and 2003, then went on a 17-year hiatus until debuting the legacy sequel, Bad Boys for Life , in 2020. Unlike many legacy sequels, Bad Boys for Life was appreciated by critics and beloved by audiences upon its release, landing a "certified fresh" score of 76% from reviewers and a nearly flawless rating of 96% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes . The film grossed more than $200 million both overseas and domestically for a total of $426 million at the worldwide box office.

Who Stars in ‘Bad Boys: Ride or Die’?

Other than the returning titular stars, Bad Boys: Ride or Die has put together an impressive ensemble cast sure to help generate a draw at the box office this summer. Vanessa Hudgens and Alexander Ludwig , both of whom previously starred in Bad Boys for Life , are back reprising their roles as Kelly and Dorn, respectively. Ioan Gruffudd , best known for portraying Reed Richards in the 2005 and 2007 iterations of The Fantastic Four and the forensic pathologist Dr. Daniel Harrow, will also play a role in Bad Boys: Ride or Die . Joe Pantoliano , who has been a franchise staple appearing in all three Bad Boys films to date, will also reprise his role as Captain Conrad Howard, except now instead of being around to help the Bad Boys, recent trailers and teasers allude to him being the one who gets them in trouble.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die arrives in theaters on June 7 in regular and premium formats. Get tickets below and stay tuned to Collider for future updates and coverage of the film.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die

Fourth installment of the 'Bad Boys' film series.

GET TICKETS

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‘christmas eve in miller’s point’ review: michael cera in a holiday movie that breaks the mold without sacrificing the joy.

A large Italian American family gathers for its annual winter celebration in Tyler Taormina’s latest feature, whose ensemble includes Maria Dizzia, Ben Shenkman and Francesca Scorsese.

By Sheri Linden

Sheri Linden

Senior Copy Editor/Film Critic

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Two features into his filmmaking career, it’s evident that director Tyler Taormina loves faces — though not in the way of Bergman or Cassavetes. Unlike those art house paragons, he doesn’t isolate his characters in order to peer intently into their souls. He collects faces by the dozen and dreams up crowded tableaus.

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Filming in Suffolk County on his native Long Island, with a cast that combines ace character actors and compelling non-pros, Taormina has made a valentine to his Italian American family, set in a fictitious town that’s grounded in everyday tchotchkes and recognizable psychology, but also not quite of this world. This is a place where Santa’s sack of gifts is a bag of discarded bagels, a Roomba and an iguana make memorable appearances, and the useless pair of policemen who patrol the suburban streets like bargain-basement versions of the angels in Wings of Desire might at any second be arrested for impersonating officers of the law.

This is also a story of endings and beginnings, dividing its attentions between the grown-ups’ revelry and worries on the home front and the wild optimism of the teens who sneak away to joyride and shoot the shit and dream. There’s also a boatload of adorable kiddos who aren’t called upon to “play cute.” The screenplay by Taormina and Eric Berger deals in rather generic storylines without dragging them through the formulaic beats of explosion and resolution.

To the buoyant ’60s pop of Ricky Nelson’s “Fools Rush In,” the film opens with a rush of upside-down Christmas lights, a kid’s POV through the rear windshield of a moving car. The kid is Andrew (Justin Longo), and he’s arriving with his parents and sister at “the old house,” the place where his mother, Kathleen ( Maria Dizzia ), and her siblings were raised. Dad Lenny (Ben Shenkman) practices his “extended-family face” in the car and, throughout the night’s doings, delivers the wry glances of an adored in-law, in the fold but still observing it. A frenzy of kisses greets the arriving foursome, with Andrew a particular target of lipsticked aunts. The love overflows.

But the movie has already established one of its central conflicts: the friction between teenage Emily (Matilda Fleming) and Kathleen, the exasperated target of her daughter’s endless hostility. There’s also a notable impasse between Dizzia’s character and her mother, Antonia (Mary Reistetter): The hesitation with which Kathleen first approaches her suggests the trepidation of a daughter-in-law who has never met the impassive woman’s expectations. But no, she’s just the kid who doesn’t visit enough.

Not all the conversations are as urgent as this one. With an Altmanesque overlap of half-heard and half-finished dialogue (but without the Altmanesque ennui), the film’s first half rotates through yakking about real estate, law and order, love of country, love of family, and kids today, with random philosophical asides. And sometimes Taormina just observes the body language of the interactions, the dialogue replaced by the energetic soundtrack playlist. Coursing beneath all the imbibing and games, the mile-long tables of food, the yuletide decorations without end, the VHS trips down memory lane, is the gradually revealed understanding that this will be the last such gathering in this house.

The screenplay doesn’t waste time on exposition, and, like any first-time visitor (Brendan Burt plays such a bemused outsider, eyeing the ornamented house’s cornucopia of kitsch with appreciation and disbelief), you probably won’t grasp all the relationships in this multigenerational get-together on first viewing, at least not until the helpful visuals-equipped closing-credits sequence.

With such a talent as Dizzia on board, wordless reactions at crucial points make explanatory exchanges unnecessary. (My Christmas wish, if anyone’s asking, would be more movies with this magnetic performer at their center.) Take the moment when Kathleen catches her resentful daughter’s affectionate — and perchance performative — ease with ebullient Aunt Bev.

Early in the evening, Kathleen tells Elyse that Emily needs “a little bit of magic.” And Taormina will certainly provide that, when, about halfway through the movie, Emily and her older, more sophisticated cousin Michelle ( Francesca Scorsese ) sneak out of the tradition-bound festivities with a couple of friends, gabby Craig (Leo Hervey) in the back seat and Sasha (Ava Francesca Renne) at the wheel of a vehicle she hasn’t quite yet mastered. Their group of Christmas Eve renegades expands with a stop at a bagel shop that’s a teen hangout — linking Miller’s Point to the sandwich-joint setting of Ham on Rye . What unfolds from there begins with crazy driving and turns into a midwinter night’s fantasia, complete with picture-perfect snowfall, a storybook crescent moon and a lone skater on a lake.

There’s also the bookending presence of three 20-somethings (Sawyer Spielberg, Billy Mcshane, Gregory Falatek) who hang out in the cemetery. Craig deems them failures, but Taormina’s affection for them is evident. His knack for observing the offhand ignorance and cruelty of youth no less than its sincere hunger and exuberance makes me eager to see what he brings to the teen-comedy format, which he’ll reportedly tackle next.

Fleming, in her first feature role, hits fascinating notes of adolescent flintiness, yearning and giddy confusion. Whether she’s ready to admit it or not, she wants to be kinder. Emily glances at the family Christmas tree like an unwanted obligation, and she puts on a tough act with her holiday-dissing friends, but the small wrapped present she carries with her through part of the night is a shiny red emblem of contrition. Late in her insurrectionist adventure, Lund and editor Kevin Anton produce an exquisite match cut that connects Emily, in a middle-of-the-night parking lot, and her mother, gazing down at an elaborate doll’s house.

The grown-ups in this Christmas story have let go of the center-of-the-universe sense of immortality that propels the kids, but they have their rites of passage too, their passions and reinventions as well as their closely held traditions. In Taormina’s comic drama of beginnings and endings, there are useless gifts and ones that matter, and it’s hard to have one without the other.

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Critic’s Pick

‘Gasoline Rainbow’ Review: We’re on a Ride to Nowhere

This semi-fictional tale of a road trip for weirdos is full of joy.

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By Alissa Wilkinson

The thesis of “Gasoline Rainbow,” the latest cinematic fantasia from the brothers Bill and Turner Ross, is articulated in its first moments, in voice-over set atop a sunset. “Sometimes when I look at night, I see that light over the hills, and I just wonder what it’s like … to be there,” a youthful voice says wistfully. The speaker wants to know if they’re alone in being who they are — a “weirdo,” as they put it. “I want to be out,” they continue. “I want to be myself, I want to be accepted. I want to be loved for who I am.”

Technically we’ve not yet met this person, but that doesn’t matter: We know them. The misfit outsider is a familiar character in movies and literature, and often possesses some wisdom that people trapped in the more conventional daily grind can’t see. There’s a tiny bit of the prophet in every outsider — and, of course, all prophets are outsiders.

“Gasoline Rainbow” is a technically fictional tale of five such misfits who get in a car and go on a journey toward the Pacific Coast. I say “technically,” because like much of the Rosses’ work, there’s not much separation between reality and make-believe. Their previous film, for instance, the 2020 sorta-documentary “Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets” sets up a scenario — the final night at a Vegas dive bar, on the eve of the 2016 presidential election — and populates it with real drinkers, who have a real rager on camera. But the bar itself wasn’t technically closing, it wasn’t in Vegas and these people weren’t regulars there. What, you might ask yourself, are you watching?

You are watching people figure out how to live at the end of the world, how to relate to one another and find joy in the middle of loss and uncertainty. Whether or not the scenario is staged, the human heart of it is absolutely real. “Gasoline Rainbow” is a little like “Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets,” in that the five teenagers at its center, playing versions of themselves, are looking for a “party at the end of the world” that they’ve heard about. But mostly they are there to be with one another, and it’s obvious their real personalities are part of the story.

The five travelers — Tony Aburto, Micah Bunch, Nichole Dukes, Nathaly Garcia, Makai Garza — are all friends in Wiley, Ore. (a town which, incidentally, doesn’t exist). They’re seeking “one last fun adventure we can all do together” before they have to return home and get real jobs. These are kids who didn’t like school and didn’t like home life. In another movie, they’d be delinquents running from the law.

But “Gasoline Rainbow” isn’t that movie. There’s an uncommon sweetness to this film, which is less about running away from something and more about discovering the road of life is littered with goodness, if you know where to look. There’s a loose, languorous quality to “Gasoline Rainbow,” which the Rosses shot using a mostly improvised format, a collaboration between actors and filmmakers. It feels like a home movie, or a documentary — a capture of a slice of life in which there’s no plot other than whatever happens on the road ahead.

That road is full of people who also feel like weirdos. There are burnouts and stoners who generously share tips and directions with the kids. There are skaters they chat with on the street who share their own stories and make sure the kids are safe and OK. Not every encounter is well and good — at one point, the tires on their van are stolen, leaving them to figure out how to keep going. But as viewers, we soon settle into the sense that these teenagers are going to be just fine.

Along the way they talk about what haunts them back home: soured relationships, preoccupied parents, loss, deportation, the general sense that life’s sameness is stifling. But almost everyone they encounter is older than them, and offers mentorship of one kind or another. At one point, before visiting some older family friends of one of the teens, another expresses worry about hanging out with “old people” who are “30 or 40.”

“Maybe they’re hippies,” another says. It’s a tiny window to the whole point of “Gasoline Rainbow,” which is this: Every generation has had its outsiders. There’s always been a group of people who didn’t feel like they really belonged. The lucky ones found one another and, decades later, are ready to pave over the bumps as best they can for those who are coming up behind. That’s the joy at the heart of this movie — the sense that for every square peg jammed into the wrong-shaped hole, there’s a whole bucket of similar shaped pegs waiting for them.

The teens do make it to the party at the end of the world, but, as you might predict, it’s not quite what they expected. It never had to be. The destination, as most of us discover eventually, is almost beside the point.

Gasoline Rainbow Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. In theaters.

Alissa Wilkinson is a Times movie critic. She’s been writing about movies since 2005. More about Alissa Wilkinson

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“Megalopolis,” the first film from the director Francis Ford Coppola in 13 years, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Here’s what to know .

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Joy Ride Reviews

Joy Ride is the perfect example of "less is more." One imagines there could be a three-hour cut of these adventures, but who needs that? This feels like the best bits from the bunch, and Goldthwait is economical in his pacing.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Oct 29, 2021

A mostly likable effort, but it doesn't quite feel like a self-contained movie with a shape and a discernible point; it's more of a collection of material arranged in a way that more or less makes sense.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 29, 2021

This shambly documentary's considerable charms come from its deceptively low-key approach.

Full Review | Oct 28, 2021

Kind of the anti-Chapelle stand-up documentary...there's a warmth and generosity of spirit in their work here.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 28, 2021

"Goldthwait and Gould prove to be engaging traveling companions offstage and amusing performers in the spotlight throughout "Joy Ride."

Both comics display the deliciously mischievous timing of old-school club veterans, reeling out outlandish yarns before yanking you back for the kicker.

It's a charming film with some big laughs.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Oct 27, 2021

It's a short documentary but Joy Ride is the type of comedy film that more studios should be making.

Full Review | Oct 25, 2021