THERE’S NOTHING ELSE QUITE LIKE THE TRIP FLICKS.

the phone call from Steve asking if he wants to get away to Spain for a week; the camera cuts from Rob to his screaming children, back to Rob, who practically sighs with relief at the idea of getting out of the house — in no small part because they banter with one another in ways that you simply can’t with strangers. For instance, Steve signs off that phone call with “My people will be in touch with, well, you.” It’s a little dig, a bit of status-positioning, but all in good fun.

The laughs in the films come from the pair’s efforts to top each other’s impressions of other famous Brits. In The Trip to Spain, Mick Jagger comes under the microscope, with Rob recounting a party at which the Rolling Stones’ frontman inspired an impromptu Michael Caine impersonation while Steve tries to one-up him by doing a better, more precise Jagger. “And sometimes he’s quite, sort of, you can see he’s quite actually doing sort of that public school thing,” Steve says, liltingly, taking over Rob’s anecdote, putting his nose in the air and his lips turned up in a Jaggeresque pout-sneer.

“But had I had a close conversation Rob and Steve, middle-aged men trying to muddle through how they feel about getting older and take stock of what they’ve done with their lives, banter with one another in ways that you simply can’t with strangers. with him, I would have said ‘What are you doing, having a child at 72?’ ” Rob says of his encounter with Jagger, and this is the heart of the film, really: moments of levity breaking up serious conversations about life and love, aging and mortality and all the rest. Steve and Rob are middle-aged men trying to muddle through how they feel about getting older and take stock of what they’ve done with their lives. Rob’s general happiness with his home life and his career contrast sharply with Steve’s despondency at not being more successful and also having no one to go home to.

Big-budget franchise features have fled screaming from things like “sentiment” and “emotional investment.” Edgar Wright has made a career of examining male friendships in films like The World’s End and Shaun of the Dead — and there are some insights into the lives of slackers trying to figure out their path forward — but their slapstick sensibilities sometimes obscure the pathos within. Logan Lucky’s exploration of fraternal competition is entertaining but not quite the same as The Trip to Spain’s study of the way friends who don’t share blood interact.

There’s nothing else quite like The Trip flicks at the movies. And I’m excited to see where they head off to next.