Starring: Paul Walker, Steve Zahn, Leelee Sobieski
Directed by: John Dahl
Having a love affair with the movies is tricky business. Sometimes, movies come out, and they test my resolve. They want me to be sure that I really do love the cinema, that it’s not just a passing fancy. Usually, I bounce back unscathed, my faith restored by an unexpectedly great indie flick or the prospect of a new Coen brothers. And then, of course, Hollywood has to lowball me, hitting completely below the belt and putting something like Joy Ride in front of me. And for a few moments, I honestly do consider walking away and throwing my devotion behind something like opera or soccer.
The film elicits two alternating, yet equally strong reactions, one that has me clapping along, giggling in uncontrolled merriment at the (largely unintentional) humor of it all, and in the other I am, at least metaphorically, curled into the fetal position, rocking myself in a fruitless search for comfort. There is virtually nothing redeeming about this movie. The acting is laughably bad-apparently, Paul Walker is not drawing much from his dramatic experiences in The Skulls or She’s All That-and actually seems to be getting worse. While one scene has him maneuvering the car in a moment reminiscent of his stunt driving days in The Fast and the Furious, Walker exists largely as a preppy pretty boy, utterly disconnected from everything that he says.
As for Steve Zahn, he adds one more to his list of inexplicable film choices (this guy needs to get a new agent), and passes the entire film in either wide-eyed “disbelief”
or in an odd frat boy imitation that is oddly disconcerting, given the fact that Zahn has a repertoire of quirky and offbeat characters behind him. Leelee Sobieski is apparently scared of success, and doing everything she can to ruin her prospects by choosing vapid films that require nothing of her beyond her youthfully sexy looks.
As for the story, well, it’s not only uninteresting and totally unbelievable, but its been done before. Two brothers, on their way to pick up a friend before driving cross-country, play a harmless joke on someone over a CB radio (pretending to be a sexy young thang, asking him to meet in a motel room, really basic stuff) and have the unfortunate luck to play this joke on what appears to be an omniscient, all-powerful and unstoppable psychopath who is bent on revenge because he really doesn’t like being the brunt of a joke.
In an adorably inadequate nod to giving Joy Ride some substance, director John Dahl shoots the occasional scene washed in green or red light (the expressive functions are endless!) and provides tension by making Walker’s character unwaveringly-and unconvincingly-moral. And those really are the highlights of the film.
Joy Ride is one of those films that I wish I could un-see. Don’t get me wrong-in this day and age, I am all for the cheap thrills and easy escapism of a bad movie, one that has little substance beyond the easy scare or the lowbrow laugh. But this isn’t even that movie. It’s inconsistent, slow, and not particularly interesting. I laughed at it, sure, but it wasn’t so-bad-it’s-funny, like we often find with camp or something featuring Keanu Reeves. It was laughter that served as an alternative to crying out in horror that this film ever got made.
As a creepy-trucker-out-to-get-them movie:
no stars
As a comedy: *