ongoing

"The Trip" that's out right now is not "The Trip' from 1967, a hallucinogenic flick where Roger Corman directed Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda and Bruce Dern. That was an infamous hippie exploitation movie where LSD inspires visions of sex and death, dancing girls, witches, hooded riders, a a torture chamber, and a dwarf. No, "The Trip" that's at Coolidge Corner Theatre right now is a skewed road trip movie directed by Michael Winterbottom ("24 Hour Party People"), starring two English comics, Steve Coogan - who's better known here in the States and Rob Brydon, a master impressionist. They play themselves, or versions thereof, quick-witted, back-biting pals with swollen egos and a near-desperate desire to comically top one another. 
   The premise is this: Coogan has been hired by an English magazine to tour the north part of the country - where he grew up - and write about restaurants. He took the gig because he thought his girlfriend Mischa would love it, but she's bowed out to work on a magazine story in America, and he's taking his friend/foil Brydon along, because, he explains, "no one else wanted to come." Brydon packs up, leaves his wife and child for a week, and the two depart for a journey where nothing of major consequence happens. But that's OK. This is about the relationship the two have, the way they battle with dueling impressions - Michael Caine and Sean Connery as James Bond - are favorites - and entertain and antagonize one another during their trek. "The Trip" is an edited, 107-minute version a six-part, half-hour English TV series of the same name. It would seem largely improvised, with the comics using almost any starting point to go off on tangential riffs - some quick-witted banter that is downright hilarious and others as if they'd burrowed down a rabbit hole and can't find their way out. Introspection is a big part of it, too. They're both in their 40s - and Coogan appears to be at some mid-life crisis point: He can't get the serious film roles he craves, he's still chasing and bedding waitresses and inn-keepers, he's pretty much forgotten about his teenage son back in London. He's funny, but in the way many smart comics are - a dark undertone courses through what seems to be a carefree life. Brydon, for his part, is such a good impressionist it sometimes gets the better of him. He can't resist talking in character - Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, Woody Allen, many more - and at one point Coogan snaps at him. Can't you say something in your own voice!
   Stopped at a cemetery, Brydon imagines his own death and wake and wonders what Coogan might say at it, prompting a nasty-funny summation of his friend's less-than-triumphant life. Brydon wants to turn the tables and eulogize Coogan, but Coogan will have none of it, walking off.
  "The Trip" is slow, certainly, a meandering road trip that parallels "My Dinner With Andre." It's about journey, not a destination, as the cliche goes - and the "food writing" assignment clearly falls into the background, although there are some marvelous jokes about what they're being served. They visit the homes of Coleridge and discuss his use of opium and perhaps whether heroin might be a good thing for them. They discuss the rugged, beautiful turf they're traveling and in the car they bond of singing ABBA's "The Winner Takes It All," and marvel that the two guys in ABBA wrote the song for the two women to sing - after their marriages had split up. There's a couple of killer "dream sequences" from Coogan, including one with Ben Stiller, talking about how so many A-list directors want to work with Coogan. When he awakens to find it's only a dream, well, the ennui sets back in again.

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