Above: The return of Steve and Rob
It’s been three years since
Michael Winterbottom’s pseudo-factual road movie “The Trip” lightly swerved
through America’s cineplexes. And yet,
it’s easy to count it among the most deliciously witty endeavors of modern
cinema. Two mischievously cool actors
(Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon) portraying themselves on a tour of Britain’s
finest cuisine? Yes, please.
Ostensibly, “The Trip to Italy” offers much of the
same—another culinary vacation (this time the boot-shaped nation of title) and
another round goodhearted humor (chiefly centered around Mr. Coogan and
Brydon’s reliably amusing celebrity impersonations). Yet this time, something feels off. The formula of this would-be franchise may be
intact, but there’s a strange lack of conflict between its leads this time
around, counterpointed by uneasy emotional undercurrents that coarsen the
pleasure of seeing two delightful performers at play in a beauteous landscape.
At
first, all seems to be well. In the
opening scene, Mr. Coogan awakens to a phone call from Mr. Brydon, inviting him
on another restaurant tour to be taken at the behest of The Observer (our heroes are only mildly perturbed by the fact that
they know next to nothing about food).
And soon, before we can even gather our anticipation, they’re there in
Italy, feasting on ravioli and delighting in their secret passion for the music
of Alanis Morissette.
Which
is all fine. Except while Mr. Brydon
remains as cheekily energetic as ever, Mr. Coogan’s performance here is
disappointingly relaxed. In the original
“Trip,” what made him to compelling was his decision to play himself as a
ferociously egotistical actor with massive chip on his shoulder. That fictional Coogan never rested on the
laurels of his hit television show “Alan Partridge”—for him, success was never
enough, though he certainly felt he deserved it (as evidenced by a perfect
moment when he suavely rearranged his hair for a photo shoot).
That
approach was nastily clever (especially since it clashed so neatly with Mr.
Brydon’s easy contentment). Yet in “The
Trip to Italy,” both actors seem calmly conceited. Gone is the Steve Coogan who once badgered a
museum docent nastily and ended up alone in empty apartment; this fellow is
jovial, content to sit back and laugh at Rob Brydon’s impersonations of the
various James Bonds.
Yet
there is another, more unsettling flaw in the movie’s matrix. In their storytelling, the “Trip” films
occupy a strange space—they’re fiction and yet because Mr. Coogan and Mr. Brydon are acting based on their own
personalities (they improvised much of the dialogue for both films), the movies
seem to offer a kind of truth. Which is
why one of the most moving scenes in the first “Trip” was when, at the close of
our heroes’ vacation, Mr. Brydon came home to trade witticisms with his
wife. In that moment, I loved and cared
about both of them, and I remembered it in “The Trip to Italy”…when Mr. Brydon
sleeps with a young woman he meets on a boat.
I get
it—Rob Brydon didn’t actually have an affair.
But how can you relax and enjoy the comedy when a character you’ve come
to care about is being betrayed? The
infidelity tempers the movie’s joy, and it’s only when Mr. Brydon starts pretending
to interview Michael Bublé that some of the hidden nastiness is finally alleviated.
I
don’t want to undersell Mr. Winterbottom’s movie. “The Trip to Italy” is often charming
(especially once the Alanis sing-a-longs commence in the duo’s rented Mini
Cooper). But this sequel doesn’t feel as
pleasant or as resonant as its predecessor.
And despite cinematographer James Clarke’s smooth shots of hotels and
sunny ocean waves, an aura of nagging dissatisfaction settles in over an
otherwise pleasant journey.
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