Film Reviews

College Road Trip

• Rating:
• Director: Roger Kumble
• Starring: Brenda Sond
• Details: USA / 83mins / (G)

Martin Lawrence moves into kiddie-friendly territory once again, but this time, he doesn't have any prosthetics to hide his embarrassment. How anyone thought making this film was a good idea is beyond me, and its appeal will be strictly limited to young kids awaiting the next animated animal farce. But surely even the youngest cinema-goer would be disappointed with this equally predictable and insipid comedy, which offers precious few chuckles, and characters so annoying that you'll wish them grievous bodily harm. Lawrence is an over-protective father who is worried about his daughter's impending college choice, and urges her to attend a university close to home. But when she bags an interview at a place 800 miles away, he has a conniption, and sets about sabotaging her plans by offering to drive her there. He loves her, really - he just has a funny way of showing it and, well, he needs to go on said road trip of self-discovery and learn to let her go. Of course, their trip is also filled with inexplicably wacky shenanigans involving Donnie Osbourne, a stereotypical Mafia don, and a bus full of Japanese tourists. The desperation in throwing a bus full of said tourists into proceedings is much more amusing than the actual execution; when you have to rely on one such unfortunate-looking character singing karaoke for amusement, then you should've given up at the super-intelligent piglet eyeballing Martin Lawrence. Director Kumble has given us a few laughs before with the amusing Just Friends, but that was made watchable more so by some funny performances. Here, well, they've got a hyperactive pig that's chowed down on a bag of coffee beans. Its message is ultimately a sweet one, but that does not make a good film, or even a mediocre one. Lawrence is very rarely funny, but here, it's the material that outshines the star for utter inadequacy.

Review by Mike Sheridan