Skip to main contentCollege Road Trip, a movie that began life as a National Lampoon production and eventually mutated into a G-rated Martin Lawrence comedy, screened for critics last night after WW press deadlines. For reasons that seem so petty to him now, Aaron Mesh ventured down to Bridgeport Village for the screening. Here is his traumatized review:
College Road Trip
When I was a boy traveling with my family, we would pass the time by playing fairly inane road-trip games. "I Spy" was a popular contest. So was "Find the License Plates of All 50 States." (We were a family with a long attention span.) There was also a game involving letters on highway billboards, which sometimes led to fights. These are happy memories.
In the new Disney family film College Road Trip, Martin Lawrence and his pretend daughter Raven-Symoné also kill time between campus visits with their own highway competition. But their favorite game is one with which I was, until now, blissfully unfamiliar: It's called "Who Can Scream the Loudest?" In all fairness, I should note that they do not limit themselves to playing this game inside motor vehicles. They also scream on university campuses. They shriek in hotel rooms. They shout in sorority houses. They screech on airplanes. They invite other people to join them in determining who can yelp the loudest and shrillest. By my estimation, there is more screaming in five minutes of College Road Trip than is produced by all the little children in Girls Rock! combined. All the screaming is of the highest volume and pitch. It is professional-grade screaming.
At the movie's outset, one would assume that Martin Lawrence would be the winner of this game. He is, after all, a comedian who depends on high volume to get most of his humor across, and he is notoriously practiced at reacting loudly in the event of, say, being Tasered in the testicles. But presumptively handing him the title fails to take into consideration that Raven-Symoné has received much of her thespian experience on the Disney Channel, which I believe contractually requires its actors to project their voices as if performing for an audience of hearing-impaired children. So she's got an impressive set of pipes on her as well, and has the added advantage of not feeling the slightest temptation to communicate her feelings in any manner other than grimacing and yelling. But even she is bested by a young actress named Molly Ephraim, who plays the daughter of Donnie Osmond. (They are also college hunting.) Now, I do not know where College Road Trip director Roger Kumble discovered this remarkable young woman, but I must congratulate him on discovering a double threat: Ephraim can both speak and sing with shrillness so intimidating that I involuntarily ducked my head whenever she appeared onscreen. She is a special talent, and the hands-down victor.
But what does it matter who the winner is? The important thing is that all of us, so long as we spend the 83 minutes required to watch this movie, are losers. Without the screaming, College Road Trip would be just another unremarkable movie with unfunny jokes. But there is so much screaming. Really, there is just an enormous amount of screaming. It's almost beyond measure. I can still hear it echoing down the corridors of my head. These are—please, I beg you to trust me on this—very unhappy memories. AARON MESH.
College Road Trip is rated G. It opens Friday at Cinema 99 Stadium 11, Cinemas Bridgeport Village Stadium 18 & IMAX, City Center Stadium 12, Cornelius 9 Cinemas, Division Street Stadium 13, Evergreen Parkway Stadium 13, Hilltop 9 Cinema, Movies On TV Stadium 16, Oak Grove 8 Cinemas, Sandy Cinemas, Sherwood Stadium 10, Tigard 11 Cinemas, Vancouver Plaza 10 Cinema and Wilsonville Stadium 9 Cinema.
WWeek 2015