Driving while stupid

>> Joy Ride is an idiotic suspense movie

by MATTHEW HAYS

Stupidity comes in many forms. In this case, stupidity comes as a movie. In fact, this should have been called Stupid: The Movie.

It's funny that this would be so stupid, especially in the hands of John Dahl, the quite smart director behind such fun, cool and not-stupid movies as Red Rock West and The Last Seduction. But Joy Ride is, indeed, a movie with bone instead of brain. Sometimes stupid movies can be fun. This one just proves rather annoying.

Hottie Paul Walker is a college freshman who's hot for Leelee Sobieski. After the two make plans to have a summer road trip, Walker receives word that his wayward older brother, played by Steve Zahn (a fine actor, incidentally, who has a bad habit of appearing in films that are generally beneath him) is in prison again. Walker must go bail his bro out. As the two brothers drive on, they begin playing infantile games on their CB radio, with Walker committing an on-air Crying Game, pretending to be a nymphomaniac woman. They make contact with "Rusty Nail," and before you can say Smokey and the Bandit, they've set up a meeting place for a blind date between their fictional gal and this lonely trucker.

This leads to some initial suspense scenes that aren't bad when Rusty Nail shows up at the motel they're staying at. Perhaps, it dawns on our fraternal protagonists, you really shouldn't mess about with practical jokes on the airwaves. Things can go wrong and get nasty fairly quickly.

But idiocy soon replaces suspense, as Rusty Nail becomes some sort of superhuman force, showing up miraculously in all sorts of places, enacting a bizarre form of revenge on the highway. Just when he seems to be nicked, they pick up Sobieski and then he's back on their tail again, kidnapping, taunting and generally being evil.

Steven Spielberg's first film, the made-for-TV Duel--which Dahl steals from liberally here--worked precisely because the villain, though mysterious, seemed at least remotely plausible. But Joy Ride leaps into unbelievable scenarios so early on as to make the film ridiculous virtually from the get-go. Dahl certainly knows how to shoot suspenseful bits and pieces, but with Joy Ride, he forgot about the film in its entirety.

Joy Ride opens Friday, Oct. 5