Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon began their trips with director Michael Winterbottom in 2010 with "The Trip," in which they traveled to the best restaurants in the British countryside. In 2014, they ventured off to Italy.
Now they're taking on Spain. It's a bro-mance that never ceases to have new nuances despite traveling the same roads, just different countries.
The two men continue to dine in some of the most amazing locales, and Spain looks like a picture postcard with its religious relics and jokes about the Catholic religion, which, for someone such as myself who spent my formative years in an all girls catholic school, the jabs are priceless.
The third installment of "The Trip" canon finds ways to be original, although the pratfalls of adult male friendships, or friendships in general for that matter, continue to be the stitched-together theme here.
That originality is found in the fact that Coogan and Brydon are a bit more cynical about the "wow" factor than they were in the first trip.
The two British actors play themselves. Well, not exactly. It's more a comical version of two, where both recite Shakespeare, trying to outdo each other's delivery. Or, at one point, an impression of Mick Jagger as King Lear. Or, who does the better Brando, Pacino, or Michael Caine, for that matter. (These are the priceless moments from the past "Trips" and they remain magical still.)
Like Abbott & Costello, Hope and Crosby, and Thelma and Louise, the pair plays off each other with a chemistry that makes you sometimes wish you really could take a road trip with them, be their best buds, yet, at other times, makes you want to turn your back on them, leaving them to wallow in their self-involved male egos.
However, the genuineness of their middle-aged plight overcomes their annoyances. The fact that much of the movie was, like the former two, improvised by Coogan and Brydon, adds to its fly-on-the-wall appeal.
There are more "Trip" movies in the works. Perhaps all involved should consider "Trip To Florida," eating their way from Jacksonville down to Little Havana. That would be quite a treat.
"The Trip to Spain" is playing at Silverspot at Promenade, Living Room Theaters FAU, O Cinema Miami Beach, Tower Theater, and The Landmark at Merrick Park.
