In its sidewinding, frequently riotous fashion "The Trip" muses on friendship, commitment, narcissism and the onslaught of middle age, but it's really about specific, smaller questions such as: Who does the better Michael Caine impersonation, Steve Coogan or Rob Brydon?
In an early stop in northwest England, as part of a series of visits to tony Lake District restaurants that Coogan (playing himself, more or less) is writing about for a magazine assignment, Brydon breaks out his best Sean Connery ("shaken, not stirred"). This is one-upped by Coogan's, and then the British comic actors riff on that for a while — wonderfully; it's the hardest I've laughed at a comedy this year — before delivering their final lines straight into the muffled echo chamber of their respective, massive wine glasses. It's the opposite of a spit take, and it was waiting to happen and to be captured on film.
"The Trip" isn't much, but it's more than enough. Director Michael Winterbottom shot a BBC 2 mockumentary miniseries — featuring Coogan and Brydon winging it, artfully — from which this feature was derived. Both performers carry much higher profiles in Britain, though Coogan has done a lot of work in the U.S. as well. As they did in a previous, richly amusing Winterbottom project, "Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story," the actors are messing around with their public images. Across a week in the car, in the country, increasingly on each other's nerves, the men reveal their insecurities. Coogan, the tabloid regular and blase, melancholic roue, objects to easygoing, upbeat Brydon, happily married with a newborn, characterizing him as "chasing" younger women. "I don't chase girls," he retorts. "You make me sound like Benny Hill." Quoting from Wordsworth and Coleridge in between impressions of Al Pacino, Anthony Hopkins and Richard Burton, Brydon spiels compulsively. (His Hugh Grant is particularly sublime.)
They flit from one exquisitely prepared, dubiously conceived meal to another, conversing very little about the food. The film ends up saying quite a bit about the petty, nattering nature of any good comic rivalry and the joys of improvisation. Another favorite bit of mine comes when Coogan imagines filming a costume epic, era undetermined. "Gentlemen, to bed!" he cries. "Tomorrow we rise! We leave at 10-ish!" That bit's good for two or three priceless minutes, and the longueurs of "The Trip" (and what trip doesn't have them?) are well worth the trade.
No MPAA rating (language)
Cast: Steve Coogan (Steve); Rob Brydon (Rob) Claire Keelan (Emma); Margo Stilley (Mischa); Rebecca Johnson (Sally)
Credits: Directed by Michael Winterbottom; written by Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon; produced by Andrew Eaton and Melissa Parmenter. An IFC Films release. Running time: 1:51
