Riding High
We’ll shut up about representation, but man it’s fun to see director Adele Lim give a giant middle finger to the idea of Asian female restraint.
Joy Ride
Director: Adele Lim • Writers: Cherry Chevapravatdumrong, Teresa Hsiao
Starring: Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, Stephanie Hsu, Sabrina Wu, Ronnie Chieng, Timothy Simons, Desmond Chiam, Daniel Dae Kim
USA • 1hr 35mins
Opens Hong Kong August 31 • III
Grade: B+
Some things cannot be unseen. In Act Two of first time director Adele Lim’s Joy Ride (not to be confused with John Dahl’s 2001 thriller) the four Asian-American women road tripping through China for the first time indulge in a night of carnality such as has rarely (ever?) been seen on screens before. Audrey Sullivan (Ashley Park, having a moment after Emily in Paris and Beef) is a hot shot lawyer, adopted from China as a child by wypipo, in Beijing to complete some sort of important business deal. She goes with her bestie Lolo Chen (comedian Sherry Cola, fabulous), an aspiring “body positive”, “sex positive” artist, and the K-pop-obsessed, awkward cousin everyone wishes would stay home, Deadeye (Sabrina Wu). Rounding out the quartet is TV star Kat Huang (Stephanie Hsu, Everything Everywhere All At Once), a college pal of Audrey’s and an unapologetic fan of sex – who’s engaged to a super-Christian who wants to wait for marriage. It’s killing her. Point of note, the film’s working title was supposedly “Joy Fuck Club”.
Early in the trip, Lolo convinces Audrey they should find her birth mother – it’s good for business in China, and the important client insists Audrey bring her to dinner. Long story short, they get off a train stoned out of their minds and have to crash at a hotel in the middle of nowhere with Lolo’s basketball player online boyfriend – and his whole team. Each of them finds their people and Audrey sails into new waters. It is the epitome of raunch-com – with a surface interrogation of inter-Asian tensions, identity and female friendship tossed in for the hell of it – and it is absolutely hilarious.
Demure my ass
But it’s also distinctly Asian, or rather Asian-American. It’s too easy to write Joy Ride off as the Asian Bridesmaids (the “chick” The Hangover, remember?) or more accurately the Asian Girls Trip. Like those, it’s its own thing, and its uniquely Asian-American perspective is where so much of Joy Ride’s comic voice comes from. No, it’s not funny that Asian women like sex, it’s all the stuff around it that’s funny. In the lead up to the night of debauchery, Malaysian-born Lim (who wrote Crazy Rich Asians and Raya and the Last Dragon) and co-writers Cherry Chevapravatdumrong (The Orville, Family Guy), who’s Thai-American, and Chinese-American Teresa Hsiao (Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens) lay a solid foundation for the dynamic among the four, and pepper the script with little details that add texture to an otherwise rote story. Lim’s got a firm grip on her material, but she’s also blessed with a stellar ensemble who each paint their characters in broad but somehow specific strokes quickly; the film is a swift 90 minutes, proving brevity is indeed the soul of wit.
We meet Audrey and Lolo as kids, when Audrey’s white parents approach Lolo’s Chinese ones (a brilliant scene) in their ultra-white Seattle suburb White Hills so she’ll have someone to connect with. Lolo promptly teaches her about how to deal with little playground shits, but that encounter lays the groundwork for Cola’s performance of Lolo as the group doyenne. But Audrey is ambitious, which puts her at odds with the constantly broke Lolo, who feels threatened by Kat, who has a history with Audrey she’ll never match. Deadeye’s eccentricities put them at odds with everybody, internalised into something too close to self-loathing for comfort. Kat struggles to balance her libido with her fiancé’s religious faith while Audrey considers why she’s never dated an Asian guy. Has she? All of them wonder if they’re Asian, Asian enough, American, and what any of it means in the grand scheme.
So, yeah, sorry, but I have to say it: This is why representation matters and makes better storytelling. It’s universality through specificity. Joy Ride is by Asian women, largely for Asian women, but Lim & Co. are also filmmakers. The idea is never to reach the smallest audience possible. Anyone who’s ever been told they weren’t “X” enough, or been forced to put up with a douchey Alpha SWM boss who really wants to be an “ally”, or had a paradigm shifting fight with a close friend, will get Joy Ride. Asian women (and more than a few men and other genders) are just going to get it more.
Joy Ride falls down a little by relying too heavily on the form’s conventions (betrayal, the blow-out, the plinking piano on the soundtrack as they go their separate ways, the reconciliation), and there are a few head-scratching leaps in story logic. For the most part, though, it’s a wildly entertaining entry in the road trip sub-category with a refreshing point-of-view and its share of riotous set pieces; aside from the Bacchanal there’s a K-pop spin on Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP” and a drug binge for the ages. There’s no tragic ending, no significant China boosting – or bashing – and there’s a string of memorable bit parts by Bridesmaids writer Annie Mumolo, David Denman (Greenland), comedian Ronny Chieng (M3GAN), Daniel Dae Kim, and former NBA-er Baron Davis. Cardi B got it, you will too. — DEK
*Joy Ride was reviewed during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labour of the writers and actors currently on strike, it wouldn't exist.
Girls be Trippin’
Girls Trip (2017), d: Malcolm D Lee
Four lifelong pals strike out for New Orleans for a suitably raucous, revelatory vacay. No one who sees Tiffany Haddish’s grapefruit demo will ever forget it.
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965), d: Russ Meyer
Meyer’s exploitation touchstone about three go-go dancers on a crime spree skips the female friendship part, but it’s an influential cult classic for a reason.
Thelma & Louise (1991), d: Ridley Scott
Duh! It’s not as fun as Joy Ride, and there’s only two pals, but when Thelma and Louise grab hands and hit the gas of that Thunderbird? Fuck! You! Perfection.