British comics Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan share an amusing penchant for performing incessant spot-on impressions in The Trip To Italy. In Michael Winterbottom’s sequel to 2011’s The Trip, the semi-fictional pair have the enviable task to take an all-expenses-paid excursion along Italy’s Liguria and Amalfi coast. Their mission: write a few reviews of high-end restaurants and lavish hotels for The Observer. Of course, it’s all an excuse for Rob and Steve to relentlessly outdo each other with competing impersonations of Michael Caine, Roger Moore, Hugh Grant, Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro. The brilliant-looking food is intermittently tossed in as so much window dressing, as are scenes of the two exploiting their celebrity and humor for the sake of exploring the good graces of a couple of female hosts they meet along the way.
The Trip is Coogan and Winterbottom’s fourth feature together (see the remarkable 24-Hour Party People). Coogan, best known in England for his portrayal of spoof talk show host Alan Partridge, this time around takes a backseat to the even-lesser-known-in-America Brydon. Coogan’s aloofness is offset by Brydon’s directness. In between the clowning, Brydon makes a half-hearted attempt to deal with his unfaithfulness to his unseen wife, who is home juggling the kids and the household. He briefly further laments the taking of a job as a lead in a fictitious Michael Mann movie that will keep him away from home for an even greater length of time but as soon as these more serious subjects come along they’re just as quickly set aside for more jokes and impressions. Coogan’s fictitious teenage son joins the pair toward the end of the trip, and Coogan makes an attempt to bring the two, who’ve been less than close, into a more meaningful space. Without these asides, there is essentially no plot here. With them there is a plot unsatisfying in its half-baked attempt at pathos. But, boy, those impressions!
Winterbottom’s impressive film catalog brags a variety of styles, from the excellent documentary The Road To Guantanamo to the nefarious X-rated 9 Songs. Here he’s managed to make a film about two guys visiting one of the most beautiful areas of the world, sharing a camaraderie yet squabbling every chance they get, affectionately bickering while also managing to earnestly critique each other and themselves. Of course, the how-much-of-it-is autobiographical question is the elephant in the room. The pair use their real names to make more immediate their intriguing exploration of male competitiveness and vanity. They have a go at mortality as well. Much is made of their retracing sites important to the lives of romantic poets Byron and Shelley, both British expatriates who died at 36 and 29 respectively. Brydon recalls many tidbits of their lives, including their intemperate personal lives. When he recites lines from Shelly in the perfect voice of fellow-Welshman Richard Burton, it’s both hilarious and poignant.
Now for a couple of spoilers. The funniest bit may be Brydon donning a man-in-a-box voice and carrying on a conversation with the plaster cast of a dead Pompeiian locked in a glass case. The funniest joke: Coogan, who throughout the film has been lamenting his own waning sexual attractiveness: “She has a lovely gait.” Brydon: “Probably padlocked.”