Review of Road Trip (Unrated)

Introduction

I bought "Road Trip" (Unrated) having not seen the film – my interest was entirely based on the “gross-out” teen comedy tag that the movie acquired when on cinematic release last year.

The plot is pretty straightforward: school sweethearts go to college on the opposite side of the country and temptation to stay faithful is just too much. Josh videos himself having sex with a gorgeous blonde student and one of his roommates accidentally mails the tape to his girlfriend.

Josh then has three days to get to Texas before the tape does to save his relationship. Not having his own car, the help of the college nerd is called on and Josh, two friends and the nerd set out on their adventure across America.

Video

Video comes in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, and as you would expect with a movie that only featured in the cinemas at the tail end of last year, is of a very high standard throughout the film. There is no sign of dirt, grain, compression problems or flicker and the image is colourful and has plenty of detail.

Audio

The soundtrack comes in both Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 flavours. I watched the film with the DTS soundtrack and the sound, like the video, is of very high quality. Of particular note are the songs which blast out from all channels and make full use of the available frequency range – as a result some of them sound absolutely fantastic.

There’s not much scope for effects moving around the soundstage in this film, but what effects there are sound good.

The dialogue is always clear and understandable throughout the movie, so you won’t miss any of the jokes!

Features

Extras consist of deleted scenes, a music video, behind the scenes featurette, cast/crew bios, and a DVD-ROM game and screensaver.

Conclusion

“Road Trip” is quite entertaining and has some hilarious moments – but is definitely a film for a night in with the lads and a crate of beer. Teen “gross-out” movies rely on a number of ingredients to be enjoyable – sex, several cool guys in the company of a nerd, some good low-taste humour and someone’s parents being arseholes. Unsurprisingly “Road Trip” meets all of these criteria!

I won’t discuss any of the set-piece scenes in this review as knowing about them in advance will make them less entertaining, but there’s plenty in there that’ll have you howling (either in amusement or disbelief).

Good video and sound are backed up with some reasonable extras – although this isn’t the sort of movie where the extras interest me. Overall, “Road Trip” follows a tried and tested formula and does basically what you expect it to – some gross gags, plenty of laughs and no Oscars anywhere in sight!