{"id":82934,"date":"2026-10-08T10:00:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T02:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=82934"},"modified":"2026-10-08T10:00:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T02:00:14","slug":"joy-ride-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=82934","title":{"rendered":"Joy Ride (2023)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Joy Ride<\/em> came to my attention because it’s the directorial debut of Malaysian Adele Lim whose columns I used to read as a teenager in The Star<\/em> newspaper. It’s a raunchy sex comedy the likes of which Seth Rogen used to make and he’s a producer here. Except here it’s a bunch of Asian American girls who are the thirsty ones and most of it is set in China. I thought that would be enough to make interesting at least. I will concede that it’s unpredictable the girls go for the dumbest and craziest ideas. But it’s a terrible film all around and actually manages to be vaguely racist against Asians even while being all about Asians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Born in China but adopted by American parents, Audrey Sullivan grows up with her best friend Lolo Chen who is the daughter of Chinese immigrants. As adults, Audrey becomes a lawyer while Lolo seems to coast creating sex-themed art that doesn’t sell. When her firm sends her to China to close a deal, Audrey takes along Lolo. They are joined by Lolo’s socially awkward and boyish cousin who is known by her nickname Deadeye and is a K-pop fan despite Audrey’s reluctance. Once they arrive in Beijing, they meet Audrey’s college roommate Kat who is now an actress. Audrey is surprised to learn that Kay is engaged to her co-star Clarence but pretends to be a virgin despite her sexually promiscuous past as Clarence is a pious Christian. At a nightclub, Audrey fumbles the meeting with the Chinese businessman Chao. He insists on knowing Audrey’s birth family before he will sign the deal and so the four friends set out on a quest to the town where Audrey where originally adopted from in order to find her birth mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a film that starts with the usual tropes, childhood best friends, girls just want to have fun, female empowerment etc. and ends in the familiar place of reaffirmed friendships and strengthened family ties. In between however, it veers off in some truly wacky and unpredictable directions. It’s a little strange at first that Kay would be at least a semi-popular actress in a Chinese period drama and that her co-star is also an English speaking Christian. But it gets totally unbelievable when they run into an American drug dealer on a train and decide that the best way to hide the drugs from the police in China is to do all the drugs themselves. Believe it or not, it gets increasingly implausible from there as they try to get by in China without having their passports. I mean I roll my eyes when comedies pull off over-the-top hijinks in the US but directly transposing this insanity to China is ridiculous. A Chinese policeman will not idly stand by while you attempt shenanigans with him. Heck, you can’t even run around the train on your own to pick thebest seats. Sure, they might include shots of the steel and glass buildings of Chinese cities and scenic views of the countryside, but whatever weird caricature this is, it isn’t China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The running joke here is that Audrey is herself racist against Asians despite her and her friends being Asians themselves. In the train, she is apprehensive about sitting with strange Chinese and picks the very suspicious white American woman instead. Whenever she opens her mouth to speak a few words of Mandarin, she butchers the pronunciation though I’m not sure if non-Mandarin speakers are meant to get the joke. Her friends call her out for it and she learns her lesson in the end. Fair enough. But it’s not just the character that makes light of Chinese, it’s the film itself. Every Chinese character with a speaking role is played by an American. Even the grandmother in the rural village speaks English and makes American-style jokes. The use of K-pop here feels more mocking than respectful. China, the country, its people and its culture, is treated like the decorative backdrop of a theme park. The raunchiness of the jokes is off-putting to me as well. In this day and age, it would be unacceptable to have a group of male friends behave like this. But doing a gender switch doesn’t make it better. Lying to your partner about your sexual history is not okay. Being rough during sex to the point of causing real physical injuries is not funny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My wife remarked that this is just a vehicle for the dumb gags and sex jokes, with the story being paper thin. That sounds about right to me. The premise of a movie about female Asian American friends on a trip to China is appealing to me. But this being way more about crass sex jokes than friendship or cultural enrichment ruins it for me. Sorry, Ms. Lim. Fellow Malaysian or not, this is awful work and it gets a thumbs down from me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joy Ride came to my attention because it’s the directorial debut of Malaysian Adele Lim whose columns I used to read as a teenager in The Star newspaper. It’s a raunchy sex comedy the likes of which Seth Rogen used to make and he’s a producer here. Except here it’s a bunch of Asian American … Continue reading Joy Ride (2023)<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82934"}],"version-history":[{"count":62,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83050,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82934\/revisions\/83050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}