Joyride(streaming on Hulu)
Rating: **
Is there any joy in watching Joyride? A film so messy it feels like we have been dragged and dumped into a chaotic kitchen cooking up a frenzy of exotic Asian foods from dumplings to momos, not sure whether the final dish is anywhere close to digestible, but hey! It’s all about a group of Chinese-American girls having fun,right?
Right. So we meet Audrey(Ashley Park), the Chinese adopted child of an American couple who grows up with Lolo(Sherry Cola) in America.Audrey is selfconsumed, Lolo is a freewheeling don’t-give-a-damn freefall artiste.They travel to China for Audrey’s work assignment andend up looking for her biological mother.
Reading the above description, you would expect an indepth exploration of cultural crisis. Nothing of that sort is to be found in this hip and ditzy comedy about an all-girls’ trip to the Mainland dotted with eccentric adventures and kooky escapades.
Some of it is mildly amusing, though not as much as the characters on screen would like to believe. It may be fun for the zany girl s to gorge on cocaine and puke all over t train .Or for them to display tattoos on their vaginas.Watching them , I felt sorry for them.
In China Audrey and Lolo and Lolo’s fey cousin Deadeye(Sabrina Woo) who looks eerily spaced out and talks as if zen has just met Gwen, or whatever, zip off for a…well, joyride. I really don’t know what I am saying. Thi film has a strangely unhinging effect on the audiences’ psyche. It presumes we are all on the same page watching Audrey, Lolo and Deadeye and Kat’s world spin into a web of wacky adventures.
Oh, didn’t I tell you about Kat? She is a daily-soap actress in China , more famous than she knows. The quartet of women do a Zindagi Na Milegi Dobaraa without the wisdom and beauty of Zoya Akhtar’s film.
Even China looks spaced-out in Joyride. This comes from excessive energy in director Adele Lim’s vision. There is way too much wind in Lim’s sail and very little staying power . The boat rocks dangerously as the ladies try to balance on their stilettos…in a manner of speaking. Do we really expect these women to wear stilettos? They are too liberated for that.Liberated and spaced out.