WTF Happened to Road Trip – Does the Todd Phillips-directed teen sex comedy still have gas?

Every once in a while, a movie makes so much money that it totally shakes up the film industry. This instance is especially true when a genre many considered dead and buried comes along and makes some serious cash. This rarity happened in a big way back in 1999 when American Pie, a movie that cost $11 million, made $235 million worldwide. Think about it – the biggest star in the film was Eugene Levy. More than that – it was a teen sex comedy. That genre played out in the early eighties when Porky’s was such a big hit that every studio decided to make a sex comedy, and pretty much all of them tanked – especially the multiple Porky‘s sequels. Teen sex comedies were replaced by John Hughes’s brand of more thoughtful teen comedies, only for that genre to fall off as well. A year before, Sony made a John Hughes-style teen comedy, Can’t Hardly Wait, and it did a modest amount of business despite being stacked with the biggest teen stars of the moment.

So, when American Pie came out, every studio did its own R-rated teen sex comedy. One of the most successful was Road Trip, which Dreamworks SKG produced. At the time, Dreamworks was one of the newsiest studios in town, and it was run by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen, the SKG of the title. They had won Best Picture with American Beauty, had a smash with Gladiator, and were in the business of making mainstream commercial fare, and no doubt the American Pie model was very attractive to them.

The film deviated just a tiny bit from the American Pie formula by making its leads college freshmen, which was more in line with Animal House. In fact, one could argue that the entire movie was inspired by the famous sequence where the Delta House heroes go on a disastrous road trip, which is fitting as that movie’s producer, Ivan Reitman, was an EP on this.

The movie marked the feature directorial debut of Todd Phillips, who would eventually direct the Hangover trilogy, and Joker (oh wait, there was a sequel? No, there wasn’t!). At the time, he was famous for several well-received documentaries, including Hated: GG Allin and the Murder Junkies and Frat House, which, despite winning a Grand Jury prize at Sundance, never came out legally because the participants said it was largely fake.

Phillips would write Road Trip with Scot Armstrong, who regularly collaborated with Phillips through the end of the Hangover trilogy. The premise was pretty simple: a nice guy college freshman, played by Breckin Meyer, thinks his girlfriend has ghosted him. As such, he hooks up with a girl he likes, Amy Smart’s Beth, and even videotapes the two having sex. Yet, by accident, one of his dorm mates mails the sex tape to his girlfriend, who turns out to have a reasonable reason for not communicating with him, so he and his pals go on a road trip to Austin from Ithaca to intercept the tape before she returns to school.

Hedging their bets, Phillips and company cast Seann William Scott, one of the breakout stars of American Pie, to virtually reprise his role from that film, with the characters being so close it’s a miracle the makers didn’t sue. Another of the movie’s co-stars was Tom Green, who, at the time, was a rising star on MTV and would briefly become a movie star. In fact, his reign lasted approximately a year, with his vehicle, Freddy Got Fingered, being considered one of the biggest flops of all time (but I dunno – I kinda like it). 

Road Trip turned out to be a box office hit. It didn’t make the kind of money American Pie did, but it made well over $100 million worldwide and launched Phillips’s career with his follow-up, Old School, an even bigger hit. Road Trip even got a quasi-sequel with Eurotrip, which we previously covered on this channel. Before getting a DTV sequel, no one saw it. It was called Road Trip Beer Pong. By the time the sequel was made, the teen sex comedy return had become more of a niche DTV market, with American Pie getting MANY DTV sequels, which have been more or less forgotten over time. But I digress.

So, how does Road Trip hold up? I’m surprised at how poorly it does, given that, as a teen, I loved this movie. Heck, Eurotrip is still hysterically funny, so I thought this would hold up just as well. What’s wrong with it? I think the issue to me is that the guys in the film are – simply put – assholes. Todd Phillips has always had a mean streak in his work, and it’s very much on display here. The three “cool” guys are pricks, with DJ Qualls’s nerdy character, Kyle, treated pretty poorly, with them trashing his car, making his parents think he’s dead, and then mocking him for who he hooks up with at a frat house party. They also steal a bus from a blind school. 

They also try to watch their buddy’s sex tape. Now, I’m not going to sit here and pretend any of this actually matters because, you know what – the guys in Animal House do way worse. The problem with Road Trip is that none of this stuff is funny. Tom Green’s mugging is especially bad in hindsight, as he’s just doing a schtick that got old really fast and colours the movie when you rewatch it. The acting is dodgy, too, with Breckin Meyers not especially likable as our nice guy hero, and co-star Paulo Constanzo doing exactly what Eddie Kaye Thomas did in American Pie, but not as well. Seann William Scott basically plays Stifler – again – and would be typecast for years before Hollywood finally let him show off his range. That said, DJ Qualls was undeniably a solid find for director Todd Phillips, but he’s so likable that when the guys mistreat him,  you can’t help but despise all of them, even though Phillips clearly thinks it’s hilarious when they pick on him. That said, there are a few funny parts, like when Seann William Scott gets his prostate milked and the bit with Barry’s grandparents, with the grandfather knocking things over with his Viagra-induced erection and getting stoned with them. Amy Smart is also pretty charming as the love interest, Beth, but she comes off as way too good for Meyer’s Josh, who doesn’t earn our sympathy like other teen sex comedy heroes of the era. 

All that said, Road Trip clearly has some fans, and if you think it holds up – more power to you. That said, for teen sex road comedies, I’m gonna stick with Eurotrip or revisit Animal House for the zillionth time. 

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