The Trip to Italy

Director: Michael Winterbottom/Starring: Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon

I guess we can categorize The Trip to Italy as a sequel to Michael Winterbottom's The Trip though that seems to Hollywoodize something that is anything but a Tinseltown construct. Maybe follow-up is more apt. One could also call it a cinematic roman a clef, as the actors play themselves in situations with people who are anything but themselves. Whatever the designation, what we have are actors Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon returning for another road trip, this time in the stunningly beautiful Italian peninsula.

If one is familiar with the first film, one expects a kind of zany travelogue with the following indispensable characteristics: offbeat, amusing, and sometimes witty banter, beautiful scenery, visits to literary shrines or places of interest dealing with Romantic Poets, comments--often tongue-in-cheek--about said poets and of course food that triggers Pavolian salivations in the viewer.

If you found the two actors stimulating company in the first film, you may so again though some elements that made the former fun come dangerously close to being tiresome the second time around. However one feels about Coogan and Brydon as travel companions--which I'm sure would vary from viewer to viewer--would be made irrelevent by two of the film's solid attributes: delectible food and the Italian coast's seductive allure.

The film wastes little time immersing one in the story, as the film opens with Brydon and Coogan driving through rural, Northern Italy. Brydon has accepted another writing assignment for a London daily, which again is to be a melding of sights and exceptional dining.

We see them in a convertible Mini-Cooper--an ideal vehicle for touring Italy and a kind of third cast member--and as one might expect, we hear dueling impersonations of Michael Caine; a nod to the first film. Though I find Coogan and Brydon's Michael Caine impersonations to be nearly indistinguishable from the genuine article, I was hoping for something new. They still manage to make them funny, particularly in a scene when the two trade comments on Caine's role in Batman. Brydon does an uproariously funny impersonation of Caine's near-sobbing voice when he says "Master Wayne."

As the two actors make their way from Northern Italy to Rome, the two continue their repartee while stopping to see landmarks devoted to Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. The two sometimes recite poetry and comment on the more salacious details of the poets' lives.

Winterbottom doesn't devote sustained screen-time to restaurant food preparation; we mostly see the amazing, culinary creations when plates are set before Coogan and Brydon. Though we don't always know exactly what is being served, our sense of taste is stimulated just the same.

During quieter moments in their respective hotel rooms, we hear the two men talking to loved ones on the phone, which reveal unhappy home lives. This serves as a sobering contrast to the merriment and gustatory pleasures the men enjoy, which create a kind of happy oblivion travellers often experience when removed from the routines of daily life.

As the actors make their way down along the Amalfi Coast and on to the ruins of Pompeii and to Naples itself, we see more wonderful cuisine, learn more about Byron and Shelley and hear more impersonations, which at this point, begin to grate. Brydon, though a talented mimic, always seems to be "on." It's difficult to discern his real voice from those he impersonates because Sean Connery, Al Pacino and Michael Caine (among others) always seem to be pouring out of his mouth. Though he has his funny moments, I don't know that I could stomach a long road trip--even one with incomparable vistas, with someone who seems compulsively entertaining. I don't know if Brydon is like his "character" in The Trip to Italy but I hope he isn't. Coogan is more thrifty with his impersonations. He devotes equal time to making witty comments and observations. And like the first film, he sometimes finds Brydon to be a bit much at times, particularly in a scene where the two men are looking over the petrified, ashen remains of a Pompeiian man who died in the Vesuvius eruption. Brydon imagines a dialogue with the corpse, which is amusing at first then plays too long, becoming wearisome. By the latter part of the film, one also begins to dread Al Pacino and Woody Allen impersonations, which never seem to let up.

A lovely long shot of Vesuvius and the Neapolitan coastline serves as a striking backdrop to the ferry-ride Brydon, Coogan and his newly-arrived family members enjoy on their way to the island of Capri.

The two were initially bound for Sicily but familial committments cut their trip short.

What's not to like about Winterbottom's film? Who wouldn't enjoy amazing cuisine, gorgeous scenery, some literary history, amusing company and a chance to tour Italy's otherworldly beautiful western coast? The sensation of being along for the ride; sharing a lunch or dinner table with Coogan and Brydon and being at their side in their touristy perambulations makes for an entertaining romp. I felt an overwhelming urge afterward to catch a flight to Italy; the allure is that powerful. We can mostly credit that reaction to Winterbottom and his cinematographer James Clarke, though Coogan and Brydon deserve some of the kill too.

Is there another trip in the cards? Could the south of France or Greece be next? Can we stand more of Brydon's pathological compulsion to impersonate every actor in the civilized world? I guess we'll have to wait and see.