“Trip to Spain” stirs aging woes into improv-comedy feast

★★★¼ Unrated. 111 minutes.

Fine restaurants provide the backdrop for philosophical musings, playful one-upmanship and more than a few celebrity impressions in “The Trip to Spain,” the third installment of Michael Winterbottom’s dryly comedic franchise, after “The Trip” and “The Trip to Italy.” What’s different this time around is how frequently these largely improvised conversations (between actors Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, playing fictionalized versions of themselves) veer into the abyss of impending mortality.

Despite being surrounded by dishes created by some of the world’s Michelin-starred chefs, the food is hardly discussed, except to marvel in passing. Cooly gan and Brydon have more pressing concerns. During one lavish meal, they declare that they are in the prime of their lives, never more vital than they are right now, at their half-century marks. They are ripe, so ripe that they realize that they are going to rot soon. The question then becomes: Are they waiting to drop from the vine, or do they want to be plucked? They quick- decide that being plucked is the more desirable option — sexual innuendo intended.

Pithy exchanges like these are volleyed back and forth across the table at a crisp speed, creating a near-musical tempo that’s easy on the ear. The banter shifts from being purely playful to increasingly competitive, however, reaching a breaking point when Brydon painfully stretches out a bit in which he confuses James Bond actor Roger Moore for a member of the northwest African Muslims, the Moors.

Coogan has an idealized fascination with the latter and tries to show off his knowledge, but Brydon keeps interrupting him. Although the competitive nature of their friendship has been present throughout all three films, it’s usually laughed off. Here, it kills the conversation.

Coogan, whose fictional character makes more than one mention of his Oscar-nominated film “Philomena,” is the bigger fish of the two. He is given more room, happily playing Don Quixote to Brydon’s dutiful Sancho Panza. The two even dress up as Cervantes’s famous characters for an ill-conceived photo shoot that has them trudging up a hill in clunky, oversize garments. Watching Brydon mount a pony hardly bigger than himself is the best sight gag of the film.

Coogan’s status is slipping though, and he can feel it. His manager recently pawned him off, and his new project is struggling to get greenlit. Meanwhile, that same manager is pursuing Brydon, telling him he could be the next James Corden. The mercurial nature of fame acts as an ideal metaphor for the fleeting and uncertain nature of life itself – all of which, in the masterful hands of Brydon, Coogan and Winterbottom, goes down more smoothly than a glass of Rioja.