Road Trip

Unseen and Explicit

Road Trip was very much like “Dude Where’s My Car” for me. In that yes it looked remotely funny but wasn’t something I would spend big bucks to see at the cinema. I still have the same opinion of it after seeing it on DVD. It really is one of those sit at home with a beer and a couple of mates and leave your brain outside kind of film. Really an atypical Hollywood teen flick.

The film has a very limited story line but with a few comedic distractions it still keeps your attention with a few hearty laughs. Basically the film is about 4 college students who set off on a road trip across the U.S. to retrieve a home made video… yes a sexually based one… before it reaches a long distance girlfriend. Josh (Brekin Meyer) has given in to the peer pressure and slept with another girl while he also invests in a long distance relationship with his life long girlfriend, half way across the country. After the two manage to tape the event and Josh’s roommate Barry (Tom Green) manages to mail it to her they face a dire problem. While Tiffany (Rachel Blanchard) is away from home for the weekend the 4 friends decide to drive to Texas to retrieve the offending Video Tape.

It’s the events that happen along the way which really give the movie it’s little depth and humour, exploding cars, stealing a blind school’s bus, running out of cash, visiting other fraternity’s and many other events make for some hilarious scenes.

Perhaps the best feature of the movie is the ongoing narration style views from Barry (Tom Green) who is portrayed in the future telling the story to prospective campus dwellers.

So how does this transfer hold up?

Video Transfer

The 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is generally very good with only some small problems to mar the transfer quality.

The transfer is really very sharp throughout and gives an immediate feeling that this will be very good but alas you do get let down a little. There are some significant amounts of edge enhancement, which really become distracting at times. Couple with this are quite frequent instances of a liasing and shimmering, which do distract from the overall image.

The colour spectrum is generally limited and I can see no reason for this. The film presents great opportunities for some brilliant and vibrant colours but I frequently noticed that the colours seemed very washed out and muted. Similarly shadow detail was good but at times lacked clarity.

In all the transfer was quite good; but frequent small problems really let it down.

Audio Transfer

The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track was acceptable but not really making a big impact on the overall experience. This is a predominantly dialogue based film so the basis of good audio really comes from this. The dialogue was clear and very easy to understand at all times. There were no audio sync problems that I noticed. The surround channels had limited use but this was to be expected. They supported some effects well and gave a little help to the score but other than that they were pretty quite throughout. Similarly the LFE channel was very quite rearing its head on a few occasions to support effects.

Features

Deleted Scenes: 8 deleted scenes and even a couple which look like outtakes. Most are quite funny but really didn’t need to be included in the film.

Music Video – Eels

Featurette – Making of: a very short 5 minutes of the making of, mainly film footage and some more great narration from Tom Green.

Theatrical Trailers x2.

Overall

This is certainly a very funny film, but most definitely leave your brain outside.

Review Equipment
TV: GE 68cm (16:9 selectable)
DVD: Pioneer 737
Receiver: Yamaha DTS RX-V595a

Speakers:-
Fronts: B&W 602

Centre: Venturi
Rears: Wharfedale Diamond R6

Sub: M&K v75
- Reviewed