‘I laughed once but suffered from the cringe’ – Joy Ride review | Films | Entertainment

The rain has been chucking it down for weeks but summer got off to a bright start in our cinemas. After the spectacular Mission Impossible 7, the excellent Barbie and the brilliant Oppenheimer, we had two welcome surprises – a decent horror in Talk To Me and a great Ninja Turtles movie.

But a grim weather front is passing over UK multiplexes today.

The biggest new release sees Jason Statham battle prehistoric sharks in Meg 2 which I can’t review here due to a fishily late press screening. Then there’s this much-hyped female-led comedy which deservedly sank at the US box office a few weeks ago.

Clearly modelled on 2017’s fitfully amusing Girls Trip (itself modelled on 2011’s brilliant Bridesmaids), the painful Joy Ride sends four young Asian-American women on a raucous journey across China.

Lawyer Audrey (Ashley Park) has been sent to Beijing to seal a deal with a Chinese firm. She doesn’t speak a word of Mandarin so invites her penis-obsessed best mate Lolo (Sherry Cola) to act as translator.

Lolo, in turn, invites her socially inept pal Deadeye (Sabrina Wu) so the poor girl can track down Chinese pals she has only met online.

Soon after their arrival, the mismatched trio meet up with Kat (Stephanie Hsu), a vain TV actress whom Audrey met at university.

Predictably, nothing goes according to plan. Their supposedly edgy adventures involve cocaine suppositories, shouting about their genitalia and impersonating a Korean pop band.

Wu and Cola show decent comic timing but they are in a constant battle with the script’s almost pathological need to shock.

I laughed once but the cringes emanated from the very marrow of my bones.

Joy Ride, Cert 15, In cinemas now