The Trip To Italy

I want to preface this review by saying that I love the BBC series and movie The Trip and was not seeing any type of follow up in its future.  The first film was self-indulgent, overly wordy and I loved every second of it.  What we have here is a very talky, wordy, frenetic exercise of dialog yet again.  Will it be as good as the first or will this one fill into a boring pothole that the original could have?  There is now a lot of anticipation for this film but will it live up to the hype of the first series?

Years after their successful restaurant review tour of Northern Britain, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are commissioned for a new tour in Italy. Once again, the two comedy buddies/rivals take the landscape as well as the cuisine of that country in a trip filled with witty repartee and personal insecurities. Along the way, their own professional and personal lives comes in as these slightly older men’s friendship comes through.

There are some enjoyable laughs and jokes by the film’s dual leads Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan, playing fictional versions of themselves again, but the comedy doesn’t strike as frequently.   Like so many sequels, this entry doesn’t have the element of surprise but that was expected.  So no, this was not nearly as amazing as the original but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t fun.  The roles of Coogan and Brydon kinda flip flop which was bizarre because the first one sets up the characters and this one ruins everything we had thought about them.

There is not much as of impressive sound issues but there is amazing visuals, who doesn’t want to looks at glorious Italy for the duration of the movie.  The disc is also lacking any worthwhile special features.

Overall, this was a disappointment compared to the first films.  There were some funny bits but overall the entire feature lacked compared to its predecessor.  That’s not to say that there were not some funny bits but  the film was a lot less likable than the first one.

Ratings are based on a 5-star scale

Overall: 3.5

Review by Bro “B” – Ben

We received a copy of this blu-ray for our review. All opinions are our own

The Trip to Italy is available on Amazon.com and other DVD retailers.