The Trip
IFC Centre, August 4, 2011
Movie #55 for 2011
Hang on a minute! This isn’t what I signed up for! I was fooled! Fooled, I tells yer! I thought The Trip was a MICHAEL WINTERBOTTOM documentary about STEVE COOGAN and ROB BRYDON (both pictured) touring the North of England’s restaurants, eating food and trying to make each other laugh. But it’s not! It’s a MICHAEL WINTERBOTTOM film about those things where Coogan plays a character called Steve Coogan and Brydon one called Rob Brydon, clearly caricaturing themselves. Coogan is a frustrated, womanising, egotistical sad-sack and Brydon a cheerful, sometimes borish, egotistical family-man. They are charmingly cranky with each other.
Winterbottom makes such interesting films and The Trip is no different. While Coogan and Brydon do impressions, bicker, drive around, eat and drink, Winterbottom also tells a story about mid-life, creativity, fame, ambition and disappointment that is by turns poignant and hilarious. I might have been fooled, but happily so.
