Goin' down the wrong road

>> Even Tom Green can't save Road Trip

by MARK SLUTSKY

Let's get one thing straight: there is nothing wrong, intrinsically, with the college sex romp. Great and hilarious things have been done with this sub-genre; witness, for example, Animal House or Revenge of the Nerds. As comedies, they have many things going for them: when good, they're fast, funny entertainment and they have license to be vulgar in the most endearing way. Sadly, Road Trip, the latest comic offering from executive producer Ivan Reitman (the man behind Animal House), shares few of these qualities.

Road Trip's premise is not without promise. Breckin Meyer plays a nice-guy college student who's been in a committed relationship with Rachel Blanchard for years. They attend college across the country from each other and Meyer, feeling neglected, has a fling with Amy Smart. When their carnal antics are captured on videotape and said videotape is accidentally sent to Blanchard, Meyer and his buddies set out on road trip (hence the title) to intercept the evidence. The entire story is narrated by Canada's own Tom Green. All aboard for hilarity, right?

The premise is not the problem here--it's the execution. The script is a real clunker, featuring dialogue so inept one is tempted to suspect the screenwriter died early in the process, leaving the actors only his treatment to work with. This could be overlooked if the film was genuinely funny. But there are only a few good gags, most of them delivered by Green. In fact, there are very few gags in the film at all.

For some reason, writer/director Todd Phillips (who, inexplicably, also directed Hated, the searing G.G. Allin documentary), chooses to focus on about seven different uninteresting subplots at once, leaving very little room for any actual jokes. Thus, when Seann William Scott, playing one of Josh's "wacky" buddies, cries, "This is supposed to be a road trip? All we're doing is driving all the time!" the viewer is tempted to nod his or her head in sorry, sorry assent.

Green is the film's one saving grace, but he's mostly relegated to an aggravatingly tedious subplot involving his character's attempt to feed a sleepy snake. It almost seems that his character was written in at the last minute in a lame attempt to turn the film into a vehicle picture. Road Trip is an eminently forgettable, amazingly long-winded ride to snoozeville. :

Road Trip opens Friday, May 19