The Trip to Italy

I'm a huge fan of Michael Winterbottom's work which is fully on display in this modest travel journal of two friends discovering the joys of Italy. Steve Coogan & Rob Brydon, the friends in question, I'll admit are an acquired taste; one that I've not yet...acquired. I kept resisting the urge to just mute the sound so I didn't have to listen to their inane, extremely irritating, babblings was only because Strauss and Mahler were used expertly on the soundtrack. And who would want to miss that? The food, the scenery and an undefined longing are all very appealing. But the self-centered mugging by the two, which we're clued to think is adorable by women, I just think needs a warning to any viewer. Try to shut them out. 'Cause they never shut up.

Not very familiar with the actors, I enjoyed some of the conversations although the imitations do start to get annoying halfway the movie. You can see they are great actors but you do feel the script pouring through lots of the time... It has to look like 2 friends getting together having funny conversations but it just doesn't work. Plus I got very annoyed with the maffia/Al Pacino/Marlon Brando imitations, it was just too easy. Overall it felt more like Michael Winterbottom has started his midlife crisis and uses the actors, the script and Italy to get to the (michaelwinter)bottom of it. A pointless one night stand, 2 older English guys "trying" to be funny, beautiful scenery, it just breathed midlife crisis everywhere. I just found it too easy, he could have made something better honestly, maybe put in a weird end with someone dying or something a bit more shocking.. now its just a small river of sometimes funny conversations between two 40something English guys who still want to shag all young, beautiful girls, and who do feel more male when they succeed in this, while they get drunk on gin and tonics... It looks like Michael Winterbottom went to Italy himself, red some Lord Byron and Don Juan, felt himself a bit like Woody Allen and combined this with his upcoming midlife crisis and this was what came out.....The scenery is beautiful though and you will crave for a fab pasta just because of the food shots.

As with their first "The Trip", I've had ambivalent feelings about these Coogan/Brydon travel/food/comedy serials. This new series follows much of the first.

If you loved the first, that's good news. But the program is a mixed bag to where you really have to call out the good and the bad.

First, the good. Coogan and Brydon have a great personal chemistry that comes off in the series as something unscripted. The locations are gorgeous, and the soundtrack adds to the grandeur of place. The series is also somewhat groundbreaking in introducing a genre of travel-food- comedy, which has its merits.

The restaurants featured in the series are researched and quite extraordinary. And the literary trail of the likes of Byron and Shelley add a cultural relevance to the program where, I would have to say, I would enjoy partaking in such a Magical Mystery Tour myself.

Next, the bad. If you removed the impersonations of Michael Caine, Sean Connery, etc., 70% of the program would be on the cutting room floor. There are few themes of humor in the program, and they are mercilessly beaten to an absolute pulp. Can you imagine spending a week-long vacation in Italy with a friend who basically ran the same gag everywhere you went?

This makes the program the Beavis & Butthead of the BBC set. If the gag gets old or doesn't work for you, the show has little else to offer you besides a few good visual scenes with the sound turned off.

Like the Magical Mystery Tour, the show's arc comes off as rather aimless and without a real destination. If the joy is in the travel, and some of it is, that would be one thing. But if there's no joy in bad impersonation banter of actors from years gone by, there's too much to redeem itself.

As a whole, the program offers glimpses of creative ideas and possibilities while failing to execute to their potential. Injecting an actual scriptwriter might have seemed anathema to the program's vision and goals, but there are few programs I've seen this year that so sorely could have improved with just one decent writer.

After laughing along with Brydon and Coogan savaging their own vanities and all of life around them, I found some of the reviews here to be more comical than the film. It's as if "The Trip to Italy" totally escapes them, probably much to the two main actors' amusement. The beauty of the ridiculous and sometimes lame impressions belies that the two are not trying to be serious travel/food hosts but two comics riffing on the idiocy of the business they are in .. and much more. This is satire, not some boring Anthony Bourdain exploration of food and culture. It's two goofy guys making fun of themselves. That so many people miss that simple point boggles my mind.

This movies falls into those genres that are dialogue heavy. For such movies to be successful the characters and dialogue needs to be very compelling. Based in Italy, the backdrop was beautiful at times but hardly enough to carry such a boring and pretentious movie. It's like the Italian version of 'before midnight' except with no romance or plot line. Just two middle aged British men rambling on, going from restaurant to restaurant and making daft impressions This is like the Italian version of before midnight with no romance or plot line.I am not sure what the director was trying to get at. I think this could be a good movie if you are trying to get to sleep out of sheer boredom on a long haul flight but hardly for entertainment pleasure.