90
Michael Winterbottom's The Trip is about 20 minutes too long, but the other 90 are among the funniest in recent memory.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
50
Slant Magazine by Andrew Schenker
Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon's shtick - a relentless verbal sparring comprised of dueling impressions, poetry recitations, absurdist riffing, and comic one-upmanship - works best in small doses.
80
The New Yorker by Anthony Lane
Best of all -- and the only thing that has really made me laugh at the movies this year -- is a lengthy scene in which Coogan, inspired by the landscape, confesses his desire to star in a traditional costume drama. [13 & 20 June 2011, p. 128]
83
The central appeal of The Trip is that it's only a comedy in bits and pieces. Overall, however, Winterbottom constructs a thoughtful and generally sad portrait of Coogan's persona as a man unsure of his next move.
80
The verbal jousts are droll and the countryside is splendid, although the food - an endless succession of fussy little presentations - may be an acquired taste.
100
Quietly, though, this amuse-bouche of a setup (culled from six episodes of BBC television) blooms into a meal of majestic agony. Coogan and Brydon's competitive bursts of celebrity impressions - Michael Caine comes in for special attention - take on a tone of clingy desperation, as does their jockeying for status in taunts of love, marriage and career.
75
Make no mistake: The Trip is a fine, funny movie. But there's no reason why it couldn't have been even finer and funnier.
91
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
The Trip looks like a lark - and is - yet there's a sneaky resonance to the way it celebrates what acting means to these two rogue cutups.
40
The Hollywood Reporter by Ray Bennett
The project suffers badly from being largely improvised as the pair fall back on familiar impressions and old jokes. Lazy and indulgent, it smacks of being what the British call a "jolly," that is a freebie with no obligation to turn in work afterward.
85
Movieline by Stephanie Zacharek
In the early moments of The Trip, you wonder if either actor will survive the enterprise.