'The Trip to Italy' is incredibly funny and a worthwhile sequel
Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan team up again as traveling companions checking out high-end restaurants in 鈥淭he Trip to Italy,鈥� the sequel to 鈥淭he Trip,鈥� a movie so funny it sometimes left me gasping for air. The premise of that first film was that these two comic actors, improvising as themselves, were on assignment from London鈥檚 Observer magazine to check out swank eateries along the coast of northern England while retracing the peregrinations of Wordsworth and Coleridge.聽
The joke was that neither Brydon nor Coogan, uneasy chums and rival actors, knew much of anything about fancy food; plus British cuisine isn鈥檛 exactly a foodie hallmark anyway.
Italy is a different story. Inexplicably called upon by the Observer to concoct another restaurant piece, Brydon and Coogan, while retracing the steps this time of Shelley and Byron, are the recipients of more plates of gleaming pasta than you can shake a fork at. The meals look eye-poppingly enticing. Yes folks, this is yet another foodie movie during which you will have to decide if you can wait until afterward to eat.
Michael Winterbottom, who also directed 鈥淭he Trip,鈥� is known for his avant-garde cinematic ways, but with these films he wisely sets down the camera and for the most part lets the actors play out their improvs. As dish after dish arrives for their delectation, they mumble 鈥�grazie鈥� and say almost nothing about the offerings. They are blithely unaware of their good fortune, perhaps because they are playing beleaguered narcissists 鈥� in other words, typical actors. They do notice, however, that beautiful women pass them by without a second look. Coogan wearily notes that, if you are a young man and look unhappy, you seem interesting. Look unhappy after 40 and you just seem 鈥済rumpy.鈥�
Coogan and Brydon get off to a rough start. Trolling through the countryside in their Mini Cooper, they discover their iPod jack has malfunctioned and the only music they can listen to, endlessly, is a CD of Alanis Morissette鈥檚 album 鈥淛agged Little Pill.鈥� Coogan has just come off a TV series in Los Angeles while Brydon is auditioning via Skype for the role of a Mafia accountant in a Michael Mann movie. The audition scene is priceless 鈥� he makes Al Pacino seem restrained by comparison.聽
The Pacino reference is apt, since throughout the movie, as with its predecessor, both actors break into celebrity improvisations at the drop of a fork. Pacino is Brydon鈥檚 masterpiece, but between the two of them, they also serve up world-class renditions of Michael Caine in 鈥淭he Dark Knight,鈥� a stuttery Hugh Grant, Anthony Hopkins as Captain Bligh in 鈥淭he Bounty,鈥� Roger Moore and Sean Connery as dueling 007s, and many others. The highpoint is a scene in which the men improvise a confrontation between a hapless assistant director on the set of 鈥淭he Dark Knight Rises鈥� and Tom Hardy鈥檚 Bane as he wheezes furiously through his face mask.聽
If 鈥淭he Trip to Italy,鈥� which was edited down from six 30-minute episodes originally aired on the BBC, were nothing but riffs such as these, it would still be worth seeing. But, despite the japery, it鈥檚 also a movie about middle-aged despondency. It鈥檚 a mellower movie than I expected, and I鈥檓 grateful for that. Coogan, divorced, is trying to connect with his son. He seems more distracted by vicissitude this time out. It鈥檚 not just the food he doesn鈥檛 register; the gorgeous scenery along the Amalfi Coast doesn鈥檛 quite sink in for him either.
The married Brydon has a casual affair with a lovely British ex-pat yacht crew member (Rosie Fellner), and his dalliance is presented without any moral high dudgeon. This is not a movie that gets unduly worked up over indiscretion. The real love affair here is self-love. But with that love, of course, comes a hefty dose of insecurity 鈥� the flip side to all that narcissism. That鈥檚 why Brydon and Coogan, fellow actors, can never be true friends, even though their lives travel the same route. And what a route it is. For movie lovers, the locations call up a galaxy of memories: the villa where John Huston shot 鈥淏eat the Devil鈥� with Humphrey Bogart and Gina Lollobrigida, the Napoli catacombs Ingrid Bergman explored in Rossellini鈥檚 鈥淰oyage to Italy,鈥� a street where Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn ambled in 鈥淩oman Holiday,鈥� a casa in Capri where Jean-Luc Godard shot 鈥淐ontempt.鈥�
They also visit the Bay of Poets in Liguria where Shelley took his fateful boat ride and, in a surprisingly moving side trip, Pompeii, where Brydon converses with the remains of a man mummified by molten lava. It鈥檚 not quite up there with Hamlet鈥檚 鈥淎las, poor Yorick鈥� soliloquy, but it perfectly expresses the movie鈥檚 tone at its best: a kind of nut-brain melancholy. This is a sequel that, for a change, was worth making. Grade: B+ (Unrated.)
