The Trip to Spain

Good but not great, this movie had me smiling throughout at the lighthearted banter, which was apparently mostly unscripted.

The movie follows two friends traveling through Spain so that one of them can write a series of restaurant reviews.

The focus is on their dialogue while they visit some tourist sights or sit in restaurants. There is not much of a story, and overall the film comes across more like a travel documentary rather than a movie.

The dialogue mostly covers food, Spanish history, and being middle aged. Most of the humor comes from the friends taking mild jabs at each other, and their impressions of mostly British celebrities such as Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Mick Jagger and Roger Moore. (There are many James Bond references.)

Overall, the formula is entertaining but I would be lying if I said it was not wearing a bit thin by the end of the film. I understand there are now three "Trip" films. I have not seen the previous two and I want to see them, although I am in no hurry because this is not the sort of comedy you can easily binge on.

"Never go on trips with anyone you do not love." Ernest Hemingway

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon have done this drill before from reviewing restaurants in the UK, Italy, and now Spain in The Trip to Spain. As always the two for the road, buddy adventure is more entertaining than the meals, though the meals play even less of a role in this iteration.

The two incomparable improvisers, guided for the third time by director Michael Winterbottom, travel by Range Rover to some of Spain's finest restaurants, with mouth-watering tapas casually served while they serve you personal barbs and impersonations so spot on you could close your eyes and swear the original was having dinner.

Especially notable are their riffs on James Bond, emphasizing the eccentric voices of Sean Connery and Roger Moore. The sequence involving Moore's Bond and an enemy having dinner together is especially amusing. In any case, both actors are world class imitators culminating in a memorable take on "Tony Hopkins."

The road trip has numerous high angle, helicopter and drone shots capturing the rolling Spanish countryside, mountain top restaurants, and Western-like landscapes enjoyable enough but downright fulfilling when accompanied by the wickedly funny banter between the old buddies. They both are not shy about picking on the conceits and foibles of their friend, and both give as well as they can take.

For some dramatic heft, Coogan is vulnerable at reaching 50 without a girlfriend or agent, and so distanced from his son as to be painful,. Even writing about his teenage years in Spain can't shake the melancholy. Enter the shot of the two buddies dressed as Quixote and Panza, no better choice to represent Coogan's drifting and Brydon's middle-aged responsibilities.

All this is to say that the lives of these two gifted actors and improvisers are not as superficial as the grand food and sights would lead us to believe. And after all, we need to be prepared for the hilarious and provocative last shot.

What is it? you ask. Take the trip and find out. It will be one of the best tours of your cinematic life, and you'll run to Netflix to see the other two. I guarantee it.

"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not." Ralph Waldo Emerson

I liked the two previous Trip movies, but they had something more than two comedians riffing off each other in exotic locations, they had some personal connection. While Trip to Spain uses the exact same formula, it lacks anything that makes me relate to the characters. It shows them having midlife drama with agents leaving or chasing them, but that's about their job, not their life. And the additional one with the son of Coogan feels artificial, as it doesn't really affect the overall story. What I would have liked was to see the relationship between the two characters evolve, but in fact it stays exactly the same.

The depiction of Spain is even more sketchy than in the other two movies, which is saying something and they are over 50. Instead of glamorous actors that seduce women in European tourist traps, they turn into the two old Muppets!

I hope there is some evolution in the next film, if there will be any, because even the jokes were duplicated from previous movies.

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon return as barely-fictionalized versions of themselves, once again on a tour to write articles about local cuisine. This time they're in Spain, but the focus remains on the dialogue and camaraderie between Coogan and Brydon, as they once again have dueling celebrity impressions of Roger Moore, Michael Caine, Mick Jagger and more. Also featuring Marta Barrio and Claire Keelan.

This follows 2010's The Trip and 2014's The Trip to Italy, and they are all virtually the same, with only the location changing: part travelogue, part haute cuisine foodie indulgence, but mainly witty, at times laugh-out-loud hilarious conversation between British film and TV stars Coogan and Brydon. The Spanish scenery is spectacular, and the many ancient buildings visited are a highlight. This one does end on a much different note than the others, and I'll be curious to see the fourth one "Trip To Greece". The formula still hasn't gotten old for me, and I'd be willing to watch more of these from all over the globe.

"The Trip to Spain" is the third in the series of 'culinery travelogue' TV programmes by Steve Coogan ("Philomena") and Rob Brydon ("Gavin and Stacey"). The pair travel by car through Spain sampling the local delicacies while constantly trying to self-salve their fragile egos and trying to out-do each other with comedy spiel. This is of course not a "documentary" as such, since the pair are playing up to their extreme alter-egos (presumably!) of what people expect them to be like. Actors playing their family, agents, etc. call them at various points on the trip to either pour oil on troubled waters or (more often) add fuel to the fire.

The six original half hour TV episodes have been edited down into a feature length journey. And this is part of the problem. Repetition that can be forgiven and forgotten about when you see an episode every week, but can become tiresome when forced on you as a continuous stream.

In this case the repetitive content delivered by Coogan and Brydon are their (normally very good) impersonations of famous stars (most of which it has to be said are British so won't resonate with a non-UK audience). Roger Moore in particular gets trotted out INTERMINABLY and while some of it is extremely funny - an exchange between Moore as Bond and Scaramanga had me snorting tea out of my nose - it all gets too much by the end.

Appearing to recognise this need for more variety, additional characters from Steve's team join them for a part of their trip - Emma (Clare Keelan) and Yolanda (Marta Barrio). Unfortunately, the additions are just plain dull: they just sit alongside Coogan and Brydon and laugh at their impressions, adding nothing. Now if they had been a couple of good female impersonators, like Ronni Ancona and Jan Ravens, that could act as a foil to the male duo, THAT would have been entertaining.

The film also suffers from "Top Gear Challenge" disease. The problem with filming a car journey through Spain is that you know there are not twenty film crews deployed along the route to do the filming.... all of the cameras are carefully set up in advance with someone on a walkie-talkie saying "OK, Steve - coffee down, we're ready for you to drive over the hill now". So something that should feel natural and documentary-like feels 100% the opposite.

So... if you like Coogan and Brydon, and especially if you liked their Northern England and Italy "trips", then you will get more laughs out of this one. But I think the concoction needs to be put through the blender and re-heated before it comes out for a fourth outing.

(For the full graphical review, please visit bob-the-movie-man.com).