Road Trip 2

It's not as good as the original and it tries to borrow too much from it, and everything that happens is pretty predictable and uninspired, but the whole thing is still tied down to an interesting, mostly fun road trip nonetheless.

It has a really generic cringe-inducing final segment where the guy is caught "cheating" and annoying dramatic music plays as he has to apologize to his "true love" and chase her and trash like that, like in literally every garbage uninspired romcom, but other than that, it's not too bad.

Especially for a direct-to-dvd thing with I assume a low budget.

Going in to the movie, i was expecting another horrible comedy similar to the stuff National Lampoon has released in recent history. The movie would probably appeal to the 13 to mid 20s crowd. It has its moments, good for some laughs. It holds your interest because the acting for the most part is well done. DJ Qualls definitely helps telling the story.

There's a few nudity scenes, nothing outrageous though, mainly just a few breast shots here and there. The main characters are intriguing and play their roles well.

So if you're looking for a decent B comedy to watch with the woman/man, it's good for a few chuckles without making you want to blow your brains out.

Beer pong is a game of impulsiveness, immaturity, and amplified distractions, so the fact that Road Trip: Beer Pong has all these characteristics, I suppose it can be seen as faithful to its subject matter. That's about one of the only things I can credit the film for, as it seems to be predicated off of the worst tendencies in contemporary raunchy comedies.

The film stars Preston Jones as Andy, a simple college kid with a loyal but somewhat oppressive girlfriend (Julianna Guill), who has just transferred to Andy's college in Ithaca. Andy and his buds Korkin (Michael Trotter, who looks nothing shy of a young Ashton Kutcher) and Razor (Daniel Newman) are beer pong players for their college and are about to compete in the national tournament. Things get better when Andy realizes that one of the beer pong advertised is a young French woman whom he had a thing with years back. Now they have an extra incentives to head out to nationals and decide to take a road trip. Blink if you think it'll be a crazy ride. It all starts when they try and gain sponsorship from a local despot named Arash (Danny Pudi), whose native country has a coup leading him and the group of collegians arrested and abandoned in a random town in Maine.

The film opens as an orientation of the college by current student Kyle Edwards, who returns from the original Road Trip film reprised by DJ Qualls. I've mentioned my appreciation for Qualls as an actor and screen-presence, mainly for his charming, every-man nature and likable charisma. Even in this film, as mediocre and as dreary as it is, Qualls finds humor and likability. Even if he is consistently being hit on by a mother-daughter team attending the campus tour.

The bar has been raised for comedies in the last eight or so years. Comedies like Road Trip: Beer Pong are similar to the series of spin-offs bearing the American Pie name, as they appeal to the smaller percentages by marketing the lowest common denominator of comedy. These are films that feature excessive nudity and confuse zealous amounts of language and bawdiness for wit and humor. Compare this to the films of Judd Apatow, some of the most humanistic and hilarious comedies you'll be able find in this day and age.

Because the bar has been raised, my main complaint with Road Trip: Beer Pong is its inability to even function as a faithful member of its genre. It mistakes excessive vulgarity and nudity for humor, completely shunning the most crucial factor in comedy, which is obviously the writing. To do that alone is a very poor move; to have it leach onto a film from 2000 and have such minimal continuity from it - like one character - in hopes to garner more viewership is nothing shy of disingenuous.

Starring: Preston Jones, Michael Trotter, Daniel Newman, Julianna Guill, Danny Pudi, and DJ Qualls. Directed by: Steve Rash.

"Road Trip" has always been sort of a guilty pleasure for me, so I guess I watched this straight-to-DVD sequel hoping that it would recapture an ounce of the original's charm. Unfortunately though, it never even came close. To their credit, they did get DJ Qualls to reprise his role (sorta kinda, he acts completely different), but that's all the effort that went into this. The writing is just so lazy, I don't watch lowbrow comedies for their ingenious plots but some kind of story would have been nice. The whole movie is just our bland protagonists going to random places (a sex comedy with a strip club scene, very original), looking at naked chicks that seriously don't want to be there and then on to the next location for more of the same. Writer Brad Riddell (of "American Pie Presents: Band Camp"...fame?) couldn't set up an actual gag if his life depended on it, so he does the next best thing: writing some dirty words on a napkin and just seeing where the scene goes from there. Furthermore, beer pong is a selling point for a movie now? Is there anything more boring than watching people play beer pong without being in the game yourself? Thank God the subtitle barely comes into play, but that's about the only decision they got right. This "sequel" is totally pointless, has zero laughs and at times is just embarrassing to look at.

This movie was basically exactly what it portrayed itself as. It was stupid, sometimes funny, and raunchy. The plot itself is pretty silly and the antics that happen during the road trip are pretty amateur. If you like watching movies about college kids being idiots, this is a good movie for that. If you are looking for a movie with good jokes and a sensible plot, this movie is not really that.