Joy Ride * * * ½

Here's a new formula - four women on a road trip, getting up to hi-jinx, learning good and bad things about each other and everyone just seems to adore them.

Yeah, I know, yawn.  Actually this one is pretty good  Much better than the average. The four gals are Asian-American.  One has done particularly well in her career and is sent to China to woo a new client.  Ironically she doesn't speak Chinese, so she takes her ne'er do well best buddy with her, who does speak Chinese.  She in turn also brings her autistic cousin, and when in China they meet up with another old school friend who is now a successful actress in a Chinese TV soap opera. She has a hunk of a boyfriend but they have never had sex because they are born-again-Christians.

Wait! This formula has been done before?!

In the initial meeting with the company she has to win over she drinks too much - of course.  Gets involved in a slapping contest and gives us the predictable vomit etc.  That's not a problem. What is a problem is that she is adopted and to win the deal she has to prove her Chinese heritage.  So somehow she has to find her birth mother in a country of one and half billion. 

The four girls run around trying to make things right but predictably just make things worse.  

Beijing never looked so good.  As wealthy, liberated and open as any Western city.  But soon its off to the countryside in China, getting shanghaied by a drug dealer, meeting and laying a bunch of basketball players that look like male models, and meeting up with good humble people in a crowded house.  Then a twist in the plot sends us off to Korea. But to get there they have to pretend to be a K-Pop Group.

It's a road trip without a car, resulting in some crazy forms of transport from trains to push bikes to cargo ships. 

It is very funny at times though, especially at the beginning. The first ten minutes will drawer you right in.  I'm afraid the shine definitely wears off about half way but it's still a fun ride. The title of this film is just about right.