Even with a brief running time, ‘College Road Trip’ is an ordeal that even its target audience will find dispiritingly lame.
College Road Trip (2008)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:69
Fresh:9
Rotten:60
Average Rating:3.3/10
Consensus: Filled with shrill gags and middling slapstick, College Road Trip is woefully short on comic imagination.
Theatrical Release:Mar 7, 2008 Wide
Box Office: $45,588,608
Synopsis: Directed by Roger Kumble (THE SWEETEST THING, JUST FRIENDS), the 2008 comedy COLLEGE ROAD TRIP stars Martin Lawrence as Chicago cop James Porter, an overprotective father who wants to keep his... Directed by Roger Kumble (THE SWEETEST THING, JUST FRIENDS), the 2008 comedy COLLEGE ROAD TRIP stars Martin Lawrence as Chicago cop James Porter, an overprotective father who wants to keep his college-bound daughter, Melanie (Raven-Symone), close to home. When the smart, assertive Melanie declares her intention to attend Georgetown instead of Northwestern, James insistently sets out with her on a cross-country car journey to Washington D.C., hoping to dissuade her along the way. En route, of course, plenty of hijinks ensue, including scenarios involving a precocious pig and, oddly enough, Donny Osmond, who turns up as an eeriely cheery dad also on a college-touring campaign. With its broad, slapstick humor and enegetic leads, COLLEGE ROAD TRIP is a perfect vehicle for Lawrence and Raven, who both play to their well-established personas--the former a cranky bumbler, the latter a headstrong teen. Osmond, in his first film role in decades, ideally embodies Ned Flanders-like enthusiasm, stealing plenty of scenes with the aid of his equally giddy on-screen offspring (Molly Ephraim). Although it's far from high-minded cinema, TRIP is a fun, family-oriented road movie that easily appeals to a wide audience, and offers up many silly and appalling moments of parental embarrassment. [More]
Starring: Raven-Symone, Martin Lawrence, Donny Osmond
Starring: Raven-Symone, Martin Lawrence, Donny Osmond
Director: Roger Kumble
Director: Roger Kumble
Screenwriter: Emi Mochizuki, Carrie Evans, Cinco Paul, Ken Daurio
Producer: Andrew Gunn
Composer: Edward Shearmur
Studio: Walt Disney Pictures
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Reviews for College Road Trip
There's a nice pro-education theme struggling to emerge from oceans of clumsy humor here, so let's be generous and say the movie deserves about a C-minus.
[Director Roger Kumble] apparently instructed the actors to SHOUT rather than speak their dialogue, as if they're performing summer stock in a cavernous auditorium.
College Road Trip may be mawkish and predictable, but some well-staged gags and several memorable contributions by supporting players keep the sap from getting too sticky.
Not that we expected much, when all is said and done. But College Road Trip ran out of ideas just after they came up with the title and had the inevitable meeting.
The intended show-stopper: a singalong of 'Double Dutch Bus' with a busload of Japanese tourists.
Martin Lawrence and Raven-Symone strike a level of chemistry that makes the whole much more than the sum of its parts.
Eyes popping and mouths agape, Martin Lawrence and Raven-Symoné mug their way through College Road Trip as if it were a silent movie -- which, come to think of it, would have been a lot less irritating.
The two leads have considerable screen appeal and decent chemistry, but are ill served by the material's sitcomish beats and mawkish resolution.
You know you're in trouble when a potbellied pig upstages the human actors.
One does not watch College Road Trip. One encounters it. Endures it. Accepts its challenge.
This is a frontrunner for worst film of the year, but a healthy $45m in the US means a sequel is likely – proof that education standards are indeed slipping.
A Disney production that would seemingly be more at home on the Disney Channel than in the local multiplex.
Imagine being locked in a car with Charles Manson, Idi Amin and Osama bin Laden. The worst road trip ever? Nope. That honour belongs to Martin Lawrence’s latest so-called comedy, which parks itself neatly between the words appalling and god-awful.
Even Donny Osmond's sparkling teeth seem a little dim compared with the unsullied gleam the movie presents as real life.
It's a dark day indeed when a movie's funniest moments involve Donny Osmond.
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