Crazy Rich Asians smashes into Bridesmaids, Girls Trip et al with Joy Ride, a female-driven comedy so outrageous it’ll leave you gasping.
star Ashley Park leads the ensemble cast as Audrey, a career-driven 29-year-old who was plucked from a Chinese orphanage as a baby and raised in the by white parents.
When Audrey, a law firm hotshot, is dispatched to China to seal a big important business deal, she decides to take her childhood BFF, Lolo (Sherry Cola), along as a translator.
Is this a wise idea, we wonder? Given Lolo is a big-mouthed, horny lay about who makes sexually explicit art, but hey, that’s what the plot requires.
Audrey finds herself on an unwanted quest of self-discovery with two more mismatched pals in tow: Lolo’s non-binary, neuroatypical cousin known as ‘Deadeye’ (Sabrina Wu) and her old college roommate Kat (Oscar-nominated Everything Everywhere All At Once star Stephanie Hsu), a former good-time girl turned Christian movie star.
How fully you hop aboard depends on your tolerance for in-your-face raunch. My level was reached with an ongoing gag involving an ‘intimate’ tattoo that’s carried to eye-popping extremes. But the superb and distinctive cast carry you through. Each of the four leads could easily make claim to stealing the show.
But it’s not all girls behaving very naughtily. As Audrey delves into her biological origin, there’s an unexpected amount of heart on display too.
I was amazed to find myself welling up, but perhaps I should’ve expected it given Joy Ride’s co-producers include Superbad creators and Evan Goldberg.
And where too often ‘Asian representation’ in Hollywood is lumped into one indistinguishable mass, the spicy humour is further peppered here with sharp insights into not just the Asian-American experience but different strands of Chinese society – plus gags about what everyone really thinks of the Koreans etc.
It’s not entirely slick. The directorial debut of Adele Lim (writer of Crazy Rich Asians) can be something of a hot mess, but that’s part of its charm. It’s fresh, it’s funny, it’s filthy.
Buckle up for a wildly exciting ride.
In cinemas nationwide from August 4.
