Rob Brydon’s distractingly good Anthony Hopkins is narrating to us before we can orient ourselves in “The Trip to Greece,” a good omen for an utterly and effortlessly joyful experience.
This marks the fourth time that experimental comedy touring band of director Michael Winterbottom, and U.K comedic royalty Steve Coogan and Bryon have united for a week that blends fantasy, reality, ongoing existential crisis, fatherhood, manhood and most importantly friendship.
“The Trip” series began in 2010, where the semi-fictionalised star Steve Coogan is commissioned by the U.K’s Observer to travel through the lakes district of northern England on a restaurant review tour. When Steve’s young romantic companion pulls out, he invites along friend Rob Brydon.
The duo returned for their literature adjacent adventures in 2014 with “The Trip to Italy” following Shelley and Byron and in 2017 with “The Trip to Spain” following “Don Quixote.” Now, they return with an “Odyssey” through Greece which serves as a kind of VOD medicine for isolation. As per usual, the series lives a double life as an ongoing six-episode T.V series for the BBC, but is also curated and released as lean film length road trips.
The opening ten minutes are unrelenting. Impressions, poking fun at historical military campaigns, the strange relationship to the work output at the result of the journey, ageing, vanity, their work – it’s all there. However, there’s something new, a laughing and unguarded Steve Coogan.
In all of the films, one of the significant elements to explore has been this ego torture of Coogan. In stark in contrast to Brydon, this irritable genius is searching for ascendancy with his friend. They’d sit across from one another and Brydon’s unbridled silliness and “always being on” showmanship would prove a great source of infuriation. The fictionalised impressions of Brydon and Coogan have been canvasses where each performer renders who they are and where they are in their life and career. They’re always in a state of insecurity, both in their status in the national (British) and international (Hollywood) concepts of their fame which leads them to the gut-wrenching face-off between legacy and family.
The second entry in the series, “Italy” was monumentally good. The locales were stunning, the jokes were ferocious and impeccably timed, and the tragic turns of the characters made you hurt in a way that you only really experience when you hear about someone you care about so deeply in life destructively disappointing you. The last series entry, “The Trip to Spain,” could not maintain the same energy and squandered the resonance of the growth of the characters to manifest the destiny of the parallel text “Quixote.”
With “The Trip to Greece” though, they have you before you know it. In their first meal, Coogan begins to outline a tale of him taking in the air on a vast estate he owns and in the momentary distraction from one of Rob’s questions the short (and quite crap) story ends. When Rob calls him on it, the Steve we’re expecting from the series so far is gone. What remains is a Coogan gleefully copping the brunt of Rob’s taking the piss out of the terrible story. His joyful and uncontrollable laughing reaction warms you like a stiff and aged scotch (one can almost feel the influence of working alongside editor Garth Franklin with that particular turn of phrase).
It seems serendipitous to our isolated state that the boys are looking forward to this one as much as we are. One cannot contain the bursting warmth that you feel being among friends again. Winterbottom has always anchored the journey’s with supersized cinematic travelogue aesthetic, and we crave that now more than ever.
Serpentine tarmac weaves its way through thick arid brush as mountainous countryside often falls away into divine turquoise waters. Injections of the piano score, so often soaring emotional landscapes devised by Michael Nyman, pluck your heartstrings. At the same time, you recover from watching another meal that makes your face hurt from smiling. However, it’s not a total holiday from who these men are. On the contrary, the exterior lives fold into the events of “Greece” in virtuosic ways that one does not want to spoil.
“The Trip” series, in memory as much as practice, is a get together with dear old friends. When you see Steve and Rob pop back up in a release calendar, it creates the internal fireworks you receive getting a physical letter from a pen pal in the post. No matter what happens, I’m going to be spoilt glaring at picturesque landscapes and sharing a meal and talking nonsense with the boys.
Seasoned with some of the most excellent celebrity impressions and garnished with the top shelf s–t talking and there you are. “The Trip to Greece” is so comforting that I’ve already watched it twice. Even thinking about how damned unexpectedly penetrating and existentially resonant this movie and the series is, I want to well up. Tears though, tend to retreat when your reflexively recall duelling Michael Caine’s through the ages; Tony Hopkins telling me to sail around the Cape of Good Hope or duelling Roger Moore’s telling me to MOVE! These guys can blow my bloody doors off any day.
