Blu-ray Review: College Road Trip

Competing in a mug off that would put to shame the love child of Jim Carrey and Robin Williams, Martin Lawrence and Raven-Symone bulge eyeballs and contort their faces with absolutely no regard for personal safety – a selfless act when one considers the fact that their faces might stay like that.

I bear Martin Lawrence or Raven no ill will however; in fact, their over the top theatrics is the only reason to keep watching this otherwise lame attempt at comedy. With a surprise hit last Fall with ‘Enchanted’, the Disney brand name for quality family pics was on the rise again (taking Pixar out of the equation of course) but ‘College Road Trip’ is a solid two steps back.

A film made for what I assume would be the tween and young teen set, the fans of Raven’s Disney show, this pic doesn’t quite know who its target audience is as the humor seems to be aimed at the single digit crowd. And when you think the juvenile humor can’t get any worse…Donny Osmond shows up. For this mawkish family pic, we get the overprotective daddy cliché rather than the negligent, workaholic daddy one with Martin Lawrence playing James Porter, a suburban police chief who goes to extreme lengths to take care of his daughter Melanie (Raven-Symone of Disney’s ‘That’s So Raven’ fame – and she produced!) who, in her senior year, is eyeballing Georgetown as her college of choice. This, of course, does not sit well with poppy who wants her to attend the nearby Northwestern University. Melanie plans a road trip to Washington D.C., the campus of Georgetown, with friends, but James butts in with the idea of a father/daughter road trip instead – the perfect opportunity to try and change her mind by any manipulative means necessary. For anybody that has seen a road trip movie; that things go awry should be no surprise but sadly, this pic has more in common with Robin Williams ‘R.V.’ than ‘National Lampoons Vacation’. Making matters worse is the stowaway surprises of Melanie’s younger brother Trey (a science geek...whaddya know!) and his pet chess-playing pig as well as another daddy-daughter duo (Donny Osmond) and Wendy who break out into show-tunes at a moment’s notice. So yeah, we get a lot of stale slapstick & humor surrounding a pig and Donny Osmond – Awesome. Lawrence and Raven do have solid chemistry but there’s little they can do with the dialogue other than overact.

It apparently took four scriptwriters to come up with this 83-minute slap to the face and director Roger Kumble, despite previously being at the helm of ‘Just Friends’, a film I quite liked, seems to hit only bad sitcomish and Disney channel show beats throughout. One positive is the great-looking high-def transfer and some competent special features. We get two commentaries, the first from director Roger Kumble and Raven-Symone and I give credit to Kumble for knowing what film he was making and poking fun at himself for it. The second commentary features two of the writers Emi Mochizuki and Carrie Evans where they mostly watch the film and laugh at it. We get a 10 minute ‘Raven’s Video Diary’ which follows the actress as she interviews cast and crew with her own camcorder. ‘Next is Deleted Scenes’ with optional director commentary and three alternate endings along with a gag reel and a music video for ‘Double Dutch Bus’ with Raven and Donny Osmond. Yikes!Take Lawrence out of the film and we pretty much have a straight to Disney Channel movie. I might have smiled a few times (and I wouldn’t admit it if I did) but the majority of the mercifully short-running time is a clunky, unfunny mess. The Blu-Ray presentation is superb but unless you’re a huge fan of Raven-Symone and/or five or six years old, this is a pic that could easily be avoided.