Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, Oscar nominee Stephanie Hsu, and Sabrina Wu star in R-rated road trip comedy Joy Ride, the directorial debut of Crazy Rich Asians screenwriter Adele Lim. It’s a gross-out, mayhem-filled, girl’s-own-adventure, made by women who get their characters and can lampoon them as much as love them, writes Cat Woods.
Joy Ride (2023)
Go to Joy Ride, which entirely lives up to the promise of its title: an abundance of joy and a hell of a ride.
In Audrey, Kat, Deadeye and Lolo, viewers will hopefully find—as I did—that they are the bizarre, brilliant best friends you wish you had, and a far cry from the ones we’ve been peddled on screen for so long. The ‘Friends’ of the 90s sitcom were blandly white, living on lettuce leaves and ironing their hair to a sheet of glossy perfection while living in exceptionally expensive New York apartments. For every affluent white kid wishing they were best friends with Ross and Rachel, there was a plethora of people who couldn’t relate, and frankly, didn’t want to.
Director Adele Lim was likely rolling her eyes at the mundanity of Friends and its ilk, while also lamenting the fact that the industry was seemingly not ready for her raunchy, hilarious, blasphemous and bold Asian women. Even after co-writing the hugely successful Crazy Rich Asians, Lim famously ditched the director’s role on the sequel over a pay dispute in which she’d receive a fraction of her white, male counterpart Peter Chiarelli’s fee.
Instead, she signed on with Disney to co-write the beautiful and well-received animation Raya and the Last Dragon with Qui Nguyen. She noted in interviews that in every department of the crew, there was no shortage of people with Southeast Asian roots already working in the company.
Lim fearlessly treads into deep water when she creates characters and storylines, equally drawing upon the clichéd depictions of Asian Americans (the restaurant owner, the martial artist, the hyper-judgemental mother, the working-class Chinese girl who must prove her worth in a white world through beauty and intellect).
In casting Ashley Park, Stephanie Hsu, Sherry Cola, and Sabrina Wu in the lead roles, Joy Ride‘s makers have taken both a huge leap of faith and given themselves the freedom to present us with flawed, sometimes vulgar, characters who don’t have solid Hollywood reputations. No publicist is going to freak out (entirely) at Ashley Park gulping down Class A drugs in a train carriage to avoid arrest, or Sherry Cola making dick jokes and swearing like a proverbial sailor. But as Audrey and Lolo, Park and Cola leave comedic duos like Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller eating their dust.
The storyline is almost secondary to the chain of ridiculously, hideously funny scenarios that befall Audrey, her childhood friend Lolo, college friend Kat (Hsu), and Lolo’s non-binary cousin Deadeye (Wu). What starts out as a simple business trip allowing American-born Audrey to travel to China becomes a search for identity and roots as she seeks out her birth mother with the help of her friends. This has to be one of the best movies of 2023, and if the Academy doesn’t fling itself wholeheartedly into this gross-out, girl’s-own-adventure mayhem then the box office and social media raves will firmly place Joy Ride in the annals of landmark movie history.
If you judge a movie by its lashings of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll—as I do—then this has it all. There’s sex (threesomes and questionable tattoo-revealing nudity), drugs (cocaine-filled condoms secured into orifices or clouds of powder gulped down hungrily), and—well, not quite rock’n’roll—the K-Pop satire to end all K-Pop satires.
In order to get through the airport after their passports are stolen, the foursome dresses up in a shower of wigs, glitter, lipgloss and skimpy outfits in an effort to convince authorities they’re a K-Pop band (Sassy, Cutie, Lisa, Lisa 2). “I don’t believe these girls are singers,” frowns the airport security. Before anyone can let the side down, Deadeye kicks off with Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s WAP (opening lyrics: “Whores in this house, there’s some whores in this house…”).
Not only is Joy Ride going to catapult its cast into lead roles—if there’s any justice in Hollywood—but it’s a stellar directorial debut for Malaysia-born Lim, who has justifiably transitioned from TV writer to studio film director. Her friends and co-writers, Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao, are fundamental to the creation of Joy Ride, too. This is a movie written by women who get their characters and can lampoon them as much as love them.
Is it just for women? Is it just for the Asian diaspora? Hell, no. On the evening I see the movie, all ages, nationalities, genders and subcultures show up and laugh uproariously, gasp and grip their seats before clapping at the credits. It’s the sort of movie where the ending comes and you are already itching to return with a handful more friends to watch discover it anew.
When Audrey learns which city her birth mother lives in, she nervously asks, “Will you guys come with me?”
It’s the question that underscores this whole joyride of a movie, and in Lolo’s timeless words, we should all respond, “Fuck yes, bitch!”
