Rob Brydon, Steve Coogan
“THE TRIP TO GREECE” My rating: B-
104 minutes | No MPAA rating:
In a major break with tradition, neither Steve Coogan nor his comedy partner Rob Brydon do a Michael Caine impersonation in “The Trip to Greece.”
In all other regards, however, the fourth film in the series (after “The Trip,” “The Trip to Italy” and “The Trip to Spain”) hits its expected marks. Fans will find ample diversions, even if it seems that this time around the concept is running afoul of the law of diminishing returns.
The format, for those who’ve been living in a cave, finds the two British comedic actors once again playing lightly fictionalized versions of themselves. Coogan has been assigned to write a travel/food piece for a major publication; he and his bud Brydon get to traipse around the Greek countryside, stopping at quaint (and sometimes spectacularly fancy) eateries to sample the cuisine.
It’s not a bad way to travel: boats, islands, ancient ruins and 370-Euro lunches on an expense account.
Director Michael Winterbottom captures some scrumptious scenery and pays mouth-watering visits to the kitchens of the restaurants Coogan and Bryden patronize.
But the big attraction, as always, is the improvised comedy one-upmanship practiced by the leading men, whose hilarious star impressions and withering putdowns fuel the enterprise.
A discussion of Alexander the Great leads to the opinion that he was a ruthless gangster and a dead-on Brydon impression of Marlon Brando in “The Godfather.”
Brydon also sings the theme song from “Grease,” despite Coogan’s protests that the song is spelled differently than the country they’re traveling. This leads to innumerable falsetto Barry Gibbs/BeeGees impersonations.
A discussion of Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman’s work in “Marathon Man” segues into a rapid-fire series of scenes from Hoffman movies, with Brydon nailing the actor’s delivery in “Midnight Cowboy” (“I’m waaawwwkin’ here”) and “Tootsie,” finally returning to “Marathon Man” and the scene in which a sadistic Olivier bores a hole in the captive Hoffman’s incisor (our boys imitate the sound of a high-speed dental drill).
A discussion of the first Olympics inspires Coogan and Bryden to hum/whistle/clluck their own version of Vangelis’ theme to “Chariots of Fire.”
And of course there are riffs spawned by Greek history: “Spartan women had a reputation as the most beautiful women in the world. Yet the men were gay. Go figure.”
For all the laughs, the series has a history of dabbling in life’s darker undercurrents. The divorced Coogan has an ongoing sexual arrangement with the female photographer sent to snap illustrations for the article, and in one of the films family-man Bryden succumbed to the double-whammy temptations of travel and female companionship.
This time there’s a brief visit to a refugee camp (“Well, that was sobering”), and Coogan gets regular updates from his grown son back in England on the status of his father, who is in hospice. The film ends with a lovely little interlude in which Brydon and his wife are reunited for a long weekend on a Greek beach.
Does it add up to much? Nah, but it’s an enjoyable 104 minutes even if this fourth iteration smacks of deja vu.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 