Female-fronted ensemble comedies are still relatively rare, but with “Bridesmaids” setting the tone some 12 years ago (!), we’ve since had “Trainwreck” and “Booksmart” and “Girls Trip” and “The Heat” and now comes “Joy Ride,” which had a working title of “The Joy F--- Club” and that would have been amazing and absolutely accurate. This is a ferociously funny, raunchy, bold and original buddy comedy with a mostly female, Asian American lead cast that teams up with director Adele Lim to deliver the funniest movie of 2023 so far.
I avoid saying a comedy is “laugh out loud hilarious” unless that’s literally true, but I laughed out loud at least a half-dozen times at the edgy antics of “Joy Ride” — and I was genuinely moved by the warmhearted scenes depicting the complicated bonds of friendship and family. Thanks to a crisp and insightful and sometimes silly screenplay by Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao, the surehanded and well-paced direction by Lim (writer of “Raya and the Last Dragon” and “Crazy Rich Asians”) and the electric chemistry among the four leads, “Joy Ride” absolutely sings.
After a hilarious, table-setting prologue set in the 1990s (featuring the best punch of the year outside of “John Wick: Chapter Four”), we catch up some 25 years later with lifelong best friends Audrey (Ashley Park) and Lolo (Sherry Cola), who remain close even as they’ve followed wildly different career paths. The relatively rigid and conservative Audrey is an attorney hoping to become a partner at her prestigious and uptight and very white law firm, while the brash and outspoken Lolo is a sex-positive artist who is struggling to make ends meet and is perhaps a bit too clingy with Audrey.
When Audrey’s supervisors give her a high-profile assignment to close a deal with a wealthy Chinese client in Beijing — they assume Audrey speaks Mandarin, and she doesn’t disavow them of that notion — Audrey brings along Lolo to act as translator. What could possibly go right? (A prevalent theme throughout “Joy Ride” is that while Lolo is deeply connected to her Asian roots, Audrey feels lost between cultures.)
Once Audrey and Lolo arrive, they’re joined by Audrey’s college best friend Kat (Stephanie Hsu from “Everything Everywhere All at Once”), who is now a popular actress in China hoping to get cast in a film that will give her a global profile, and Lolo’s socially awkward cousin Deadeye (played by nonbinary standup Sabrina Wu), who has made online connections with a bunch of fellow K-pop lovers, and is hoping to connect with them in person. Assuming they’re actual people, of course.
Through a bit of forced plot contrivance, Audrey puts herself in a bind that can only be resolved if she meets her birth mother, which kicks off a classic Road Trip Comedy that takes us across China and eventually to Korea. Clocking in at a breezy 92 minutes, “Joy Ride” still manages to find time for a myriad of subplots, including the rivalry between Lolo and Kat to claim Audrey as best friend; Kat’s romance with her Christian co-star Clarence (Desmond Chiam), who believes Kat is a virgin, and let’s just say that’s a long, long way from the truth, and some madcap hijinks involving a drug dealer and a train trip gone horribly wrong.
Oh, and we’d be remiss not to mention the various hookups involving members of a men’s basketball team, and the K-pop cover of Cardi B’s “WAP,” and the reveal that one member of our quartet has of a very elaborate tattoo in an extremely intimate area, and when I say reveal, I mean REVEAL.
Time and again, “Joy Ride” embraces stereotypes and turns them sideways for effective comedy (with just a sprinkling of social commentary), whether it’s Audrey’s colleagues throwing her a “Mulan”-themed birthday party; Audrey feeling she’s too Asian for America but too white for Asia; or a Chinese family’s reaction to learning someone they thought was Chinese is actually Korean.
Mostly, though, this is a comedy that once again proves women, in this case Asian American women, can go as raunchy and wacky as guys in “The Hangover” movies. All four of the main players are outstanding, with Park leading the way as the smart, flawed, funny, deeply empathetic Audrey; Hsu and Cola delivering solid laughs and some genuinely moving turns; and Wu creating one of the most indelible and lovable characters of the year in the fantastically awkward Deadeye. If there’s a “Joy Ride 2,” and why not, sign me up for the trip.
