Road trip films seem to be on the right track, despite little love from critics
R-rated comedies that amp up crudeness factor doing well at box office
Yes, that is Robert De Niro rolling through spring break in Daytona Beach with Zac Efron in trailers for Dirty Grandpa.
With a battle cry of “Party ’til you’re pregnant,” De Niro has rejoined the road trip genre that he previously drove to perfection in 1988’s Midnight Run.
But the R-rated Dirty Grandpa, which arrived in theatres Friday to less than rave reviews, joins 2013’s Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa as players in a far raunchier road trip resurgence.
“Hollywood likes to come back to these films, which are getting cruder and cruder,” says Jeff Bock, box office analyst for Exhibitor Relations.
“That’s how they are selling this one, come see Robert De Niro as grotesquely rude and crude. That’s either a master stroke or desperate times.”
Here’s a look at the wild state of road trip films and a few key trends: Crude is king A steady stream of major-studio Rrated road trip comedies have flowed into theatres, ranging from July’s Vacation (a successor to 1983’s National Lampoon’s Vacation) to 2014’s Tammy. The rebirth is partly strategic nostalgia.
“We’re seeing more of these because today’s filmmakers grew up with classic ’80s road trip movies like Planes, Trains & Automobiles,” says Dave Karger, senior correspondent for Fandango.com. “But these classic films are simply hard to live up to.”
While the crudeness is amped up, often as the critical approval ratings have dropped, the new films have made money.
2014’s Dumb and Dumber To raked in $86 million with a 29-per-cent critical approval on review aggregation site RottenTomatoes.com, while Vacation hit nearly $59 million (27 per cent approval), Tammy made $84 million (23 per cent) and We’re the Millers took $150 million (47 per cent).
Even the Chipmunks hit the highway with the PG-rated Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip. ParentPreviews.com notes that “potty humour and flatulence jokes are used.” Road Chip has quietly rolled to $81 million (17 per cent approval). Some of them are critically acclaimed Film historian Leonard Maltin says that quality road adventures are indeed out there, they are just harder to find.
“There’s unlimited life in road trip movies, even if it hasn’t yielded great results of late,” Maltin says. “It’s a staple of the storytelling process, because it’s all about what happens get- ting here to there.”
Maltin points to Lily Tomlin’s Grandma, as well as Jason Segel and Jesse Eisenberg in The End of the Tour, as “sturdy” independent examples in 2015. Road trip movies are evolving Grandma writer/director Paul Weitz says the urge to get out and explore America, the essence of many great road trip movies, has lessened in the modern age.
“People are having road trips on their iPads,” Weitz says. “Before, if you wanted to have these experiences, you had to get up and go somewhere.”
Meanwhile, Weitz believes the genre is heading into bold new worlds, such as spaceships. “In a weird way, (the new) Star Wars is a road trip movie with all that stuff happening in the Millennium Falcon.” The future could get odder. “Once there are self-driving cars, that will take it to a whole new level,” Weitz says.