Movie Review Joy Ride (2023)
Tower of Joy , 2023.
Directed by Adele Lim.
With Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, Stephanie Hsu, Sabrina Wu, David Denman, Annie Mumolo, Chris Pang, Isla Rose Hall, Desmond Chiam, Alexander Hodge, Nicholas Carella, Debbie Fan, Victor Lau, Rohain Arora, Chloe Pun, Kenneth Liu, Brian Cyburt, Johnny Wu and Daniel Dae Kim.
SUMMARY :
Join four Asian American friends as they make friends and discover the truth about what it means to know and love who you are as they travel across Asia in search of one of their mothers.
Lead director Adele Lim (and screenwriters Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao) is utterly raw and honest, and consistently hilarious .
It also practically hits the ground running with its energy and confused humor, starting with a short prologue showing how Audrey (Ashley Park) and Lola (Sherry Cola) became friends. Hailing from White Falls (apparently near Seattle), Asian-American Audrey struggles to make friends in a racist, predominantly white neighborhood until her parents (David Denman and Annie Mumolo) abandon the new baby on the square. games. Lolo suggests that they play together since they have the same background. Not even a minute later, Lolo punched one of the racist bastards. Thus a lifelong friendship was formed.
Today, Audrey is a high-profile lawyer who wants to show her worth to the people around her, especially white Americans. Deep in a male-dominated work environment (with a reproductive culture where co-workers question whether what they say is appropriate while vowing to be allies for equality), Audrey naturally brings years of childhood bullying into their lives and falls into a silence. merciless. cycle of skeptics and tries to integrate into a community he initially wants nothing to do with, while destroying his own cultural identity (which is funny, since he often comes off as racist towards his fellow Asians). while he is quick to trust the most enigmatic white women imaginable, listens to mostly white music, and never dates another Asian woman.
Meanwhile, Lolo is a struggling artist who lives with her best friend Audrey until she starts selling some of her projects. They were all sexually charged (including penises and vaginas in some form) and said there was no shock value and wanted their work to encourage a positive conversation about sex. It is also clear that maturity cannot take his personality further in the opposite direction; Audrey is often stressed, work-oriented, and constantly determined to fight her way to the top, simply because the idea of feeling pressured to work harder than everyone else is unwavering when you feel like an outsider. As for Lolo, she is calm, relaxed and open to sex.
Audrey's work also took her on business trips to her native China. He asked Lolo to accompany him as a translator, who saw this adventure as a chance to find Audrey's biological mother, as they said when they were dirty children. This did not sit well with Audrey, who wanted nothing to do with her culture or heritage. He came to seal the deal and that was it. It turns out that bringing her mother to the party this business associate is throwing will go a long way in accomplishing her task, with Lolo impulsively making sure Audrey's mother comes too. Crime across China races against time to find Audrey's mother and join the party.
It's also where Audrey met her college friend Kat (Stephanie Hsu, who was nominated for an Oscar last year and is as impressive here as she is about to break into another genre), a soap opera actress with whom she reformed her sexually perverse behavior and is now dating. its Christian counterpart. Difficult. -Stars who insist on being single until marriage. Lolo's K-pop cousin Deadeye (Sabrina Wu) also arrives and assures everyone that she will finally meet her true friend online.
The chemistry within the quartet is lively and every bit of tough dialogue is delivered with heart and sincerity. Joy Ride is not only a very funny film about cultural identity, but it is also a relatively sober look at the friendships that exist within those cultures and the differences outside of them. There are some conversations about what it means to be Chinese or Asian that strike a balance between insight and comedy. The filmmakers also don't use Deadeye as a punching bag to make simple jokes about social misfits, but rather as another entry point to explore what it means to be a true friend.
In the sense of the compatibility of work and pleasure, or as you say, pleasure, everyone has the opportunity to be excited without shame. It's fair to say that by going down the professional rabbit hole, Audrey has completely lost track of who she is, and characters like Kat have gone too far to mold her personality into that of a person she's not really. knows it. . She is shy to the man she wants. Maybe it's up to Lolo to help everyone find each other, even though she's so messed up that she puts everyone in a very awkward situation.
Unsurprisingly, the script indulges in the usual trope of a friendship breaking up in the third act, but such events don't bother here as the film and magnetic cast succeed mostly in exploring identity. Some dramatic situations feel rushed or too familiar, but it's easy to get caught up in the inevitable tension between the characters. Adele Lim knows when to embrace the crazy madness and daring sex orgies and when to slow down for the occasional overwhelming thrill. "Joy Ride" is outrageous and cleverly written, often using laughter to drive the story's themes forward.
Burning Myth Rating - Movie: ★★★ / Movie: ★★★★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the editor of Blinking Myth Reviews. Check here for new reviews, follow me on Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
