When his daughter is offered an interview at a college in Washington D.C, over-protective father James Porter (Martin Lawrence) offers to drive his daughter from their hometown in Chicago to Washington D.C. Despite his good-intentions, James' interference and over-protective nature turns this road trip into something of a nightmare.
There have been many road trip films over the years (all of varying quality), but none that I've seen so far have managed to be quite as annoying as College Road Trip...
The underlying base of the story isn't actually too bad; an over-protective father struggling to let his child fly the nest and being unable to bear her being too far away from him. Deep, deep down there is quite a sweet story here, but unfortunately it's suffocated by a bunch of loud and annoying characters (Donny Osmond and his daughter were the worst examples and are two of the most irritating characters that I've ever witnessed on film). It's almost as though the filmmakers genuinely believe that by putting a bunch of unbearably happy people on the screen that this will somehow make its audience happy, but the truth is that a lot of these characters had the opposite effect on me; none of them felt believable and the relentless cheeriness and stupid dialogue that many of the characters were given never felt believable and a lot of the time it made me feel as though I was watching caricatures rather than real people.
The film does seem to have all the clichés in the book; over-protective father, weird kid, rebellious teen who has awkward relationship with dad, but whom inevitably bonds with dad et al. The problem with this film isn't necessarily its clichéd approach, but more to do with the fact that the filmmakers don't make any of the characters or the dialogue funny. Character development is also a bit hit-and-miss; for example the weird kid is just weird and given no real development and isn't funny.
The performances (if you can call them that) aren't up to much I'm afraid - but that's mainly because many of the actors are either shouting or screaming at one another. When watching this film it often felt like it was trying too hard to be funny and the more it tried the worse it got.
There are one or two nice moments between Lawrence and Symone which prevent it from getting the minimum score, but other than that this is an unbearable, unfunny, loud and annoying film that would have greatly benefited from a less is more approach being employed.
There have been many road trip films over the years (all of varying quality), but none that I've seen so far have managed to be quite as annoying as College Road Trip...
The underlying base of the story isn't actually too bad; an over-protective father struggling to let his child fly the nest and being unable to bear her being too far away from him. Deep, deep down there is quite a sweet story here, but unfortunately it's suffocated by a bunch of loud and annoying characters (Donny Osmond and his daughter were the worst examples and are two of the most irritating characters that I've ever witnessed on film). It's almost as though the filmmakers genuinely believe that by putting a bunch of unbearably happy people on the screen that this will somehow make its audience happy, but the truth is that a lot of these characters had the opposite effect on me; none of them felt believable and the relentless cheeriness and stupid dialogue that many of the characters were given never felt believable and a lot of the time it made me feel as though I was watching caricatures rather than real people.
The film does seem to have all the clichés in the book; over-protective father, weird kid, rebellious teen who has awkward relationship with dad, but whom inevitably bonds with dad et al. The problem with this film isn't necessarily its clichéd approach, but more to do with the fact that the filmmakers don't make any of the characters or the dialogue funny. Character development is also a bit hit-and-miss; for example the weird kid is just weird and given no real development and isn't funny.
The performances (if you can call them that) aren't up to much I'm afraid - but that's mainly because many of the actors are either shouting or screaming at one another. When watching this film it often felt like it was trying too hard to be funny and the more it tried the worse it got.
There are one or two nice moments between Lawrence and Symone which prevent it from getting the minimum score, but other than that this is an unbearable, unfunny, loud and annoying film that would have greatly benefited from a less is more approach being employed.