Quick Synopsis: Four friends travel to China (well, one was already there) to help Audrey land a business deal. Sexually explicit hilarity ensues

Adele Lin probably has the best record for screenwriting; Crazy Rich Asians, Raya and The Last Dragon, and now Joy Ride. All incredibly written films and all three of them are unapologetically Asian. That may not seem like a big deal, but the aforementioned Crazy Rich Asians was the first film by a major Hollywood studio to feature a majority Asian cast in a modern setting since 1993’s The Joy Luck Club. That’s 25 years with a large audience being ignored by mainstream Hollywood. I don’t really have a point to this, I just wanted to mention The Joy Luck Club so I can segue naturally into the fact that this film was originally (apparently) going to be called The Joy Fuck Club, and I find that funny. Instead, it’s called Joy Ride, which is okay as a title, but is going to be confusing in my archives because I’ve already reviewed a film called that.

I really enjoyed this. It’s got pretty much everything I want in a film; great jokes, emotional depth, good characters, and a condom of cocaine exploding in someone’s ass. This is probably the best outright comedy I’ve seen in a long time, causing some of the loudest laughs I’ve heard in a cinema for a long time. It’s not just the laughs though; it brings the emotion when it’s needed. It has a lot to say about cultural identity and that when you have a foot in two separate cultures how it can make you feel like you don’t truly belong in either of them. It’s effectively pulled off, not just because of the writing, but also due to the talent of the lead performer Ashley Park. She has tremendous chemistry with co-star Sherry Cola, to the point where it’s very easy to believe that they’ve been friends for years. The other two leads: Stephanie Hsu and Sabrina Wu are also a delight to watch, but the whole thing lives or dies on the relationship between Park and Cola. Stephanie Hsu is good, but she’s not given quite as much to do as she was in Everything Everywhere All At Once, but “not quite as good as she was in one of the best films ever made” isn’t exactly a condemnation. Sabrina Wu has the widest range going from socially awkward silence to excited info-dumping on KPOP. , They also provide probably the most emotional point of the movie, when they think all their friends have abandoned them. All four of them turn what could be stereotypical characters into multi-dimensional real people. They all have moments where they’re selfish and moments where they’re right; the whole thing feels very real.

Now onto something else; it’s filthy. The trailers indicated it, but it doesn’t quite prepare you. It says a lot where a scene where they sing WAP is probably one of the least lewd moments, until the end of it anyway where it suddenly becomes incredibly sexual and funny. Personally, I think the WAP scene went on slightly too long. The scene made its point and then continued. It did lead to a satisfying pay-off, but that pay-off would still have been achieved even if the scene was cut in half. The sexual confidence the film provides will also put some people. Actually, the fact it’s a female-lead sex comedy will be enough to put some people off. One negative review saying it “objectifies men, targets white people”. I mean, it’s weird to watch a film which features a lingering shot of a vagina tattoo and think that shirtless men are the ones thought of as being sexual. And I don’t really see how it targets white people. If anything, China gets much more attacked; outright saying they’re racist towards Koreans. I think what the reviewer meant by that is; it shows sexual attraction from a female POV, and the white characters aren’t important to the plot. If you’re not going in looking to be offended, then it’s a fantastic watch with themes that will resonate with everybody. I mean, I did feel incredibly white whilst watching it. But that wasn’t because of the film, it’s because I had Hot Honey Ice Cream which I assumed would mean “warm honey throughout the ice cream”, but actually meant “spiced honey”, so whilst watching a film about Asian culture, there was me, a very white person, sitting there thinking “oof, this ice cream is a bit spicy”.