We’re just a few weeks away from the release of Joy Ride, and if my early screening is any indication, fans are going to absolutely love Adele Lim’s movie. It’s every bit as drunken and sexually aggressive as any mainstream R-rated comedy we’ve seen in the last decade, and if you don’t believe me, let me refer you to the film’s original title, which I just found out and can’t get enough of.
That’s right. Apparently the film, which was written by Lim, Teresa Hsiao and Cherry Chevapravatdumrong, wasn’t always called Joy Ride. Instead, according to Variety, its working title while it was being shopped around was Joy Fuck Club, which is obviously a reference to The Joy Luck Club, a 1989 Amy Tan novel that was turned into a hit 1993 movie of the same name that was widely praised for being one of the first Hollywood films to feature a majority Asian cast.
The Joy Luck Club follows four Chinese immigrant mothers who all have daughters that are more Americanized and see the world differently. The film deals with a lot of larger themes about identity and expectations. Joy Ride follows four younger Asian women who go on a road trip together to China, as they too explore similar themes of identity and expectations. Of course, the films deal with those questions in very different manners and have very different tones, but each is effective in its own way.
Now, you may be wondering why it changed its title prior to release. Like Let’s Be Cops, the original title was both hilarious and conveyed its tone, but there is just a lot more that goes into selling a movie than that. Even if the film contains dozens of fucks (I didn’t count), in-movie raunchiness is very different than marketing material raunchiness. And while there are movies that have kept the f-bomb in their titles, it creates a ton of problems since a lot of the places you may want to market the movie aren’t going to accept saying or spelling out the word. So, even though I love the working title, this was obviously the right move.
Regardless of what it’s called, you can check out the movie when it hits theaters on July 7th. Early buzz is excellent. The film currently has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and fan reactions have been really strong too. I liked the movie and couldn't recommend it enough, but if you're still unconvinced, you can check out our guide to what we know about Joy Ride.
I'm very confident people will like it, but how it'll do is an open question. There’s a reason studios don’t make a ton of R-Rated comedies anymore. There are a lot of people who don’t see that type of material as worth going to the theater for and would instead rather wait to check it out on streaming. I get it. But in my opinion, great comedies are like great horror movies. Experiencing the madness alongside other people adds to the joy, and I’d highly recommend spending the money and hitting up a theater. Hopefully enough people feel that way and go out and support both that and No Hard Feelings to revitalize the genre.
