Susan Granger’s review of “The Trip to Italy” (IFC Films)
Filmmaker Michael Winterbottom reunites his comedic stars from “The Trip” (2010) for another appetizing adventure, as they research an additional gastronomic article for The Observer newspaper in London. This time, instead of exploring northern England, Steve Coogan (“Philomena,” “Night at the Museum”) and Rob Brydon travel in the footsteps of romantic poets Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, driving their Mini Cooper down spectacularly scenic highways, staying in luxurious suites in high-end hotels and sampling epicurean fare at stylish Italian restaurants – from Piedmont, down the Amalfi Coastline to sun-drenched Capri – while sipping Barolo wine and listening to a Alanis Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill” CD.
Discarding the minimal plot, it’s the bantering, bickering personalities of acerbic Coogan and jovial Brydon that fuel the fun on this road trip, as these two, middle-aged British actors play semi-fictionalized versions of themselves. Born in Manchester, Coogan is a cynical pessimist; hailing from Wales, Brydon comes across as an emotionally needy optimist. Their improvised celebrity impersonations – from Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino to lock-jawed Clint Eastwood and Hugh Grant, even Tom Hardy, as unintelligibly muzzled Bane in “The Dark Knight Rises”– are hilarious. Yet there is an undercurrent of discontent and awareness of mortality in this melancholy journey, as Coogan Skypes with his estranged teenage son (Timothy Leach) and Brydon auditions for a part in an upcoming Hollywood film. One particularly memorable sequence finds Brydon conversing with a fossilized corpse on Mount Vesuvius in the ruins of Pompeii. Others include riffs on Roberto Rossellini’s “Voyage to Italy,” Humphrey Bogart’s “Beat the Devil,” Gregory Peck’s “Roman Holiday” and, of course, “La Dolce Vita.”
Glorious food samplings include an assortment of meticulously prepared pastas, tasty moscardini (small octopi) and exquisitely garnished guinea hen. Both this and Winterbottom’s previous “Trip” originated as a six-part BBC television series that’s been edited for theatrical release.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Trip to Italy” is a leisurely, sublimely sybaritic 7, filled with irrepressibly clever repartee.
