Metacritic reviews

Joyride needs some deft actors driving it, and it has lucked out: An up-for-anything Olivia Colman and scrappy newcomer Charlie Reid make for an unlikely but appealing buddy duo.

It doesn’t always successfully balance its comic and poignant tones, but yet another powerhouse performance from Olivia Colman makes Joyride a disarming experience.

This odd-couple comedy road movie paints its characters in brushstrokes so broad you could land a jumbo jet on them, while the intrusively affable score lurches into every scene like a drunk with no concept of personal space. And yet Colman saves the picture, her thorny performance gradually revealing a well of pain.

Every actor involved sells it hard and it’s good natured, but the unbelievability factor is just too high.

It’s hard to treat Joyride just as a pleasant but easily disposable romp, especially when Reynolds loads up the film with so much cheap symbolism.

There is nothing much to actively dislike here. Reynolds, a hugely experienced editor who won an Emmy for directing the superb documentary The Farthest, keeps the energy high and allows her fine cast to exercise all muscles. But Joyride feels like old-fashioned stuff.

If you’re able to look past the police’s bizarre inaction, Mully’s implausibly excellent driving skills and the schmaltzy score, there are moments of fun to be had.

Colman does her absolute best to counter a scenario that manages to be both strangely off-putting and patly predictable, by shaping up a tartly unsentimental turn.

Joyride is a jalopy of a film. This Irish-set story of a brand-new single mother and a precocious 13-year-old boy who end up on the road together is so scattershot and far-fetched it overwhelms its better intentions — of which there are many.

Joyride, a grievously schematic blend of odd-couple comedy and life-affirming road movie, traverses the Irish countryside with a small degree of charm and a boatload of blarney.