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Just last week, my husband and I went on a little road trip to visit family—but, fortunately, it was nothing like the trip that the Porter family takes in Disney’s College Road Trip.
Though Chicago-area police chief and overprotective dad James Porter (Martin Lawrence) wants his brainy daughter, Melanie (Raven-Symoné), to go to college close to home, she dreams of going to Georgetown. So when she finally gets a chance to interview at her dream school, Melanie is elated. James, on the other hand, is mortified.
Instead of letting Melanie go on a weekend college road trip with her two best friends, James decides to take her to Georgetown himself. After all, during all those hours together on the road, he figures he’ll have plenty of time to change her mind.
College Road Trip is Harold & Kumar for the Disney Channel crowd. The formula is pretty much the same: two characters head on a road trip, determined to get to a certain place in a certain amount of time. Along the way, they face all kinds of wacky roadblocks and mishaps. In the most recent Harold & Kumar movie, they faced rednecks, government agents, and Neil Patrick Harris. In College Road Trip, the Porters end up led in the wrong direction by a faulty GPS device, they find Melanie’s brainy little brother (Eshaya Draper) and his pet pig stowed away in the trunk, and they keep running into Donny Osmond and his show-tunes-singing daughter. In fact, even the comic style is similar. Of course, this G-rated family movie isn’t as crude as Harold & Kumar. But the two do share the same kind of campy, slapstick (and often completely over-the-top) sense of humor. In College Road Trip, though, the childish humor seems a little more appropriate—since, well, the movie was actually made for children.
And, as far as kids’ movies go, College Road Trip isn’t half bad. My 10-year-old nephew thought it was funny—and since he’s in the movie’s target audience, you can probably take his word over mine. But although I’m far from the movie’s target audience, even I couldn’t help but laugh at the trained pig—or at Donny Osmond’s obnoxiously hilarious antics.
Sure, it’s all pretty silly, but it’s the kind of silly that kids love. And sure, Raven-Symoné tends to overact a bit—while her ditzy on-screen BFFs shriek their way through most of the movie. But it’s still a cute and campy family flick that’s good for a few laughs. In fact, I may be closer to Harold & Kumar’s target audience than I am to College Road Trip’s, but if I had to pick one of the two zany road trip movies to watch again, I’d pick this one.
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