The Trip to Italy

The dueling Michael Caines return as those comic actors with a gift for impersonation Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon continue the culinary adventures they began in The Trip (SFIFF 2011). Director Michael Winterbottom manages to one up that film’s gorgeous Lake Counties scenery and food porn quotient by sending the bickering buddies to Liguria, Tuscany, Rome, Amalfi and Capri. As before, the reason for the journey is ostensibly to write a series of articles for The Observer and there is an element of documentary in the restaurants, the hotels and all the attractions that the men visit. But Coogan and Brydon—who completely improvised their parts—are playing fun-house mirror versions of themselves. The more successful and famous Coogan shields massive insecurity and petty jealousy of even the smallest Brydon triumph behind a mask of obnoxious arrogance. Affable, diminutive Brydon is more passive-aggressive, gently needling his friend and not immune to his own insecurities. On the road together they are a joint midlife crisis on wheels, yet as they squabble their way through some of the most stunning real estate on this planet, their humor never deserts them and neither does their wonder in the world. Erudite travelers, they chase the ghosts of Byron and Shelley—one-upping each other with quotations in the same manner that they duel over their movie-star impressions—even as they ogle the typical tourist sites. It is a misnomer to call what Coogan, Brydon and Winterbottom have created mockumentary. The trio digs deeper than that, arriving at a character-driven tale that is both hilarious and poignant. —Pam Grady