Road Trip review

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ROAD TRIP

Going off to college or university can be a real education: learning who you are, meeting colourful people from all walks of life, and tasting forbidden fruits - sometimes for the first time, mostly until they make you sick.

Attending lectures and seminars, and reading textbooks? Well, they're just a bonus. For nice guy Josh (Breckin Meyer), the trip to the University of Ithaca in New York means just one thing: a three-year separation from his childhood sweetheart Tiffany (Rachel Blanchard) who is studying 1,800 miles away at the University of Austin, Texas.

When Tiffany suddenly stops returning his calls, Josh fears the worst: perhaps she has found herself a new man in Austin and is too busy having fun to bother getting in touch.

Upset and confused, Josh turns to his sex-crazed best pal EL (Seann William Scott) for advice who suggests a fling with gorgeous co-ed Beth (Amy Smart). With a few glasses of beer inside of him, Josh thinks that EL's words of wisdom make perfect sense, and he and Beth hook up one raucous evening, committing their amorous antics to videotape.

Josh is taken aback by how much he enjoys spending time with Beth, but the guilt soon hits him when, the next day, he discovers that his pot-smoking room-mate Rubin (Paul Costanzo) has accidentally mailed the offending videotape to Tiffany. Desperate to prevent Tiffany ever seeing the tape, Josh persuades EL and Rubin, and geeky neighbour Kyle (DJ Qualls) who owns a car, to join him on a road trip from Ithaca to Austin to intercept the mail and save his relationship.

Road Trip is a National Lampoon's Animal House or Porky's for the '90s, populated by fun-seeking guys who let their libidos do the thinking, and pretty young gals who wield their sexuality like a deadly weapon.

The film seldom wanders the corridors of political correctness or good behaviour: Kyle chows down on French toast which has been prepared by a short order cook with no concept of hygiene; and EL is given a helping hand (literally) to make a deposit at a sperm bank when a rubber-gloved nurse tickles his prostate gland.

Although Road Trip is an avid student of the school of bad taste, the overall tone is more sweet than unsavoury, staying focused on Josh's quest for love which eventually takes him where he least expects.