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Critics Consensus

Amiable, funny and sometimes insightful, The Trip works as both a showcase for the enduring chemistry between stars Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon and an unexpected perusal of men entering mid-life crises. Read critic reviews

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The trip photos.

Food critic Steve Coogan and traveling companion Rob Brydon trade delicious barbs and clever remarks as they tour various eateries in northern England.

Genre: Comedy

Original Language: English

Director: Michael Winterbottom

Producer: Andrew Eaton , Melissa Parmeter

Release Date (Theaters): Jun 10, 2011 limited

Release Date (Streaming): Nov 12, 2015

Box Office (Gross USA): $2.0M

Runtime: 1h 49m

Distributor: IFC Films

Production Co: Baby Cow Productions, Revolution Films, BBC

Aspect Ratio: Flat (1.85:1)

Cast & Crew

Steve Coogan

Paul Popplewell

Margo Stilley

Claire Keelan

Rebecca Johnson

Dolya Gavanski

Kerry Shale

Steve's US Agent

Michael Winterbottom

Andrew Eaton

Henry Normal

Executive Producer

Simon Lupton

Melissa Parmeter

News & Interviews for The Trip

Digital Multiplex: 21 & Over , Quartet , and More

Critics Consensus: Super 8 is Certified Fresh

Critic Reviews for The Trip

Audience reviews for the trip.

A funny and charming two-men mockumentary (of which most is improvised), edited from the BBC TV series and relying on a great chemistry between Coogan and Brydon - and it is almost impossible not to laugh hard at their hilarious impersonations and remarks on the food.

A wonderfully entertaining, charming and very smart road-trip comedy. A classic buddy comedy between these two friends who have some of the best chemistry and improvisation that i have ever seen. Their does not even need to be a script, just these two mad men talents going at it with character development, exotic locations, delicious dishes, brilliant impersonations and huge laughs. A flat-out funny movie that's a real good-time. A film about friendship and other adult conversations that just not include food but bout life, sex, children, relationships and careers. A beautifully crafted and superbly performed movie.

The Trip is akin to those "reality" TV programs shown on crime TV where they re-enact the crime in question; with the camera faithfully recording the occurrence. Here you have an entire film that on the surface seems spontaneous (especially given that there is no credit given to a screenwriter), and yet one can't help but realize that each and every bit of story and dialog is being shown to you on screen - meaning, of course, that there was a camera present at all times. This then brings into question the credibility of the entire enterprise, but if you can get past the cinematic slight of hand, you end up with some very witty dialog and laugh out loud funny repartee (usually given in celebrity voices as both leads, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are gifted mimics). But as these 40 something lads go joking their way through northern England, there is a melancholy undertow that is slowly revealed - making the coda of the film quite stirring and poignant. In the end you can reflect back on these two characters and how petty jealousy seems to ride shotgun in the Land Rover they use to get from one idyllic village to the next - and truly wonder if that jealousy is indeed petty or if Coogan's character realizes where he is in life and that all his victories thus far pale when compared to the solid family relationship of Brydon, who has what Coogan only subliminally acknowledges as his desire - to have the true love and support of a woman (even though he may be emotionally incapable of handling such a relationship). His return to an empty flat perfectly symbolizes the emptiness of his life at this juncture. Pretty deep stuff for a "comedy" that on the surface is really about.... Well nothing much - and that's the beauty of it - revelation through the mundane. There is a scene towards the end of the film where Coogan and Byrdon visit Coogan's parents on the way back to London - when Dad asks which route Coogan is going to take, he then, upon hearing the route, shakes his head and says "that way will never do - there's too much in the way of roadblocks - better to retrace your path" - a metaphor for Coogan's life if ever there was one.

In "The Trip," the actor Steve Coogan has an assignment to write about restaurants in his old stomping grounds of Yorkshire for Observer Magazine but nobody to go with him as his girlfriend Mischa(Margo Stilley) has other professional commitments. After going through half of the London phone book, Rob Brydon, the comedian, agrees to venture forth with him, despite or because of the infant in his household. Complications arise at their first stop when the only room available at the inn is a double which Magda(Dolya Gavanski) promises to look into. Alternately funny and sad, "The Trip" goes beyond documenting how hard it is to find a decent meal in England(and what glorious food they consume!) to explore other areas of British culture, including its literature and popular entertainment from the perspective of some beautiful countryside that is blessed with inconsistent cell phone reception. While referencing James Bond movies(luckily I've recently again seen the relevant conversation from "The Man from the Golden Gun," so I know what they are talking about, just like the "Top Gear" reference) might speak to Steve Coogan's inexplicably being a babe magnet, this behavior also shows how lonely he is(at least this version), not being able to be alone for long. At the same time, he enjoys despite himself, along with the audience, the relatively brief company of his fellow entertainer and friend, allowing for some hilarious semi-improvised riffs.

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What a Long, Strange Funny Trip ‘The Trip’ Series Has Been

Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan bring their midlife crisis travelogue back for another hilarious, heartbreaking spin around Europe

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“Imitation comes naturally to human beings and so does the universal pleasure in imitation.” —Aristotle, Poetics

So quotes the British television personality Rob Brydon to his longtime fellow traveler and peer in English entertainment, Steve Coogan, as the two commence the latest installment in a decadelong series of adventures that has taken the gloriously mismatched pair on odysseys through Italy, Spain, the north of England and now, in the fourth edition, Greece. The films themselves—known as The Trip movies—have carved out an unusual niche that alchemizes improv, narrative film, and the sort of elevated televised travelogue perfected by Anthony Bourdain. The result is a compelling hybrid whose foundational elements are the remarkable comic chemistry between Coogan and Brydon and the sumptuous visual flair of director Michael Winterbottom.

The Trip to Greece makes the odyssey metaphor literal: In this edition, our protagonists have resolved, or at least have been persuaded, to retrace the steps of Odysseus’s endless journey home from the Trojan War.

In truth, Brydon doesn’t quote Aristotle exactly. He reads theatrically aloud from a Penguin Classics edition at a high-end Turkish restaurant where he and Steve Coogan are enjoying a typical fine-dining experience while driving one another up a wall. The animating action of 2010’s franchise-launching The Trip explained that Coogan had been hired by a big-ticket publication to travel in style through the British countryside, sampling all of the most extravagant cuisine the region had to offer. The budget for this junket was so generous that he could even afford to bring along a friend. The problem was, he had no friends. So, Coogan invited Brydon. Having always perceived Coogan a pompous ass, Brydon was puzzled by the offer but too curious to turn it down. Countless laugh-out-loud verbal jousting matches later, the world is a better place for it.

Reduced to its simplest terms, the dynamic between Brydon and Coogan is the populist entertainer pit against the high-minded auteur. Ostensibly, Coogan regards Brydon’s comedy as needlessly pandering, while Brydon fatigues easily of Coogan’s sanctimonious homilies on high art and literature. Brydon hectors Coogan as he drives through some remote Athens suburb, singing the Barry Gibb–penned theme from Grease . Coogan lashes out: “Are you singing the theme to Grease simply because we are in Greece? You do realize it’s a homophone.” “How dare you!” an ostensibly offended Brydon replies, with mock indignity. And so it goes—adult men reduced to childish bickering, which in some peculiar way centers them.

On one level, The Trip series is intended to function as a high-gloss, chamber of commerce–approved overview of some of Europe’s most stunning and fascinating sites, and it routinely succeeds spectacularly at this task. In The Trip to Greece, mountain views and Mediterranean vistas are shot with opulent majesty, gourmet meals are carefully prepared and elegantly served, and tours are taken with an appropriate awestruck awareness of their historical consequence. If all you want out of The Trip series is an opportunity to luxuriate by proxy, you will find the movies gratifying. But increasingly, this isn’t what the movies are really about at all.

On another level, there are instances of terrible loneliness in The Trip pictures, specifically the sidebars when we see Brydon and Coogan reach out to their respective spouses, children, and girlfriends over phone or video. Travel allows for the provisional possibility of what it might really mean to be separated from your domestic arrangements, among other things. It is a temporary window into the road not taken.

If The Trip movies have a signature gambit, it is the propensity of Brydon and Coogan to break into dueling celebrity impressions mid-conversation, as though this were a perfectly ordinary mode of interlocution.

The impersonations themselves—of Marlon Brando, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, and other canonical figures of 20th-century entertainment—are funny on their own. Both are gifted mimics. But the true hilarity comes from the manner in which these episodes escalate, each party inevitably regarding the other’s attempts as left wanting, constantly interrupting one another to critique tone and inflection. The effect is suggestive of a tennis match conducted by two highly skilled players, both reluctant to acknowledge the ability of their rival. It is also one of a handful of tactics the two employ to cope with the imposed intimacy of their circumstances without resorting to the unpalatable alternative of expressing true emotion or anxiety.

The sort of situation in which two souls are drawn together only to reveal one another’s essence through their differences is a venerable, if offbeat, microgenre. One antecedent of the Trip movies is the series of pictures Bob Hope and Bing Crosby made together between 1940 and 1962—known collectively as The Road movies—which feature two very different brands of entertainers on loosely scripted and largely improvised sojourns that frequently break the fourth wall. In both instances, a central subtext is the strangeness of traveling with someone under close conditions that you know well but not intimately.

Hope and Crosby are a primordial version of Brydon and Coogan —both pairs are bound together by cosmic happenstance, without particular explanation. Hope is always eager to please and happy to overact if the moment calls for it. Crosby fashions himself subtle and dignified, but his weakness for women and general lack of discipline tends to derail their stated goals, mirroring Coogan’s messy personal life in The Trip movies.

Both series employ a host of tactical misdirects—surrealism, dream sequences, and endless gags—which elide the limitless problems the pair make for one another, and the fundamental ways in which their connection is both mysterious and arbitrary.

Another progenitor, closer to home, is Tom Stoppard’s 1990 head-fuck masterpiece Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead , which reimagines two of Hamlet ’s minor characters as bumbling companions trapped in an endless loop of meta-history, trying to reason out their destiny through an ongoing dialogue in which neither can remember which of their names applies to one or the other. This mirrors the gradual sense in The Trip movies that Brydon and Coogan—over their most strident objections—are beginning to blur together in middle age.

In their endless babble and occasional acts of tenderness, the title characters played by Tim Roth and Gary Oldman in Stoppard’s picture ultimately come to recognize that their plight is shared, their differences immaterial, and in the end it always turns out the same for all of us. Their game of rhetorical tennis is a comic reflection on the nagging horror that lies just beyond the last clever remark. A poet once said, ”You may be pretty good with words, but words won’t save your life.”

Some of the strange and compelling energy that characterizes The Trip movies is attributable to the program’s initial beginnings as episodic television on BBC. Each of the four seasons was first aired as a series of 40-minute specials before being edited into feature-length films. As a result, narrative beats occur at unorthodox intervals while resolutions hang uncomfortably for what can seem a long time. Early on in The Trip to Greece , we learn that Coogan is experiencing a family crisis. We see him briefly forlorn before he saunters around Greece. In the last act of the picture, the full threat of potential tragedy has been realized. These tonal shifts might feel more organic when broken up into weekly bites, but in the feature version, the emotional whiplash is powerful. Winterbottom, the brilliant director of Welcome to Sarajevo and 24 Hour Party People , makes a virtue of this potential complication.

There is some precedent for this. Large swaths of David Lynch’s 2001 classic Mulholland Drive were originally scheduled to be aired as a weekly network show, before ABC got squirrelly and cut bait. That gave Lynch the opportunity to re-edit the would-be series into one of the great cinematic achievements of recent times. As streaming services and studios increasingly blur the line between traditional features and television, a new vernacular will undoubtedly emerge that intuitively interpolates the best and worst practices of each medium. The Trip movies have been a sort of canary in the coal mine for this process, to great effect.

Ultimately, The Trip ’s two principals are one but they’re not the same. Brydon and Coogan as portrayed in the series are the human equivalent of major and minor chords: wonderful in relation to one another, but permanently separated by their modal constitution.

In this way, they are the McCartney and Lennon of road pictures, each finding the other nourishing and exhausting in equal measure, each startled by the prospect that they might be characterized as the irritating one.

During the surreal climax of The Trip to Spain , the entry prior to The Trip to Greece , Coogan’s tortured romantic exertions leave him sideways and stranded with a broken car somewhere in the North African desert. His rescuers arrive, but they do so on a tank, and it soon transpires that they are revolutionary militants. It’s a moment that could have occurred in Hope and Crosby’s Road pictures, or amidst the sundry insanities of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead . Meanwhile Brydon and his wife blissfully reconnect in their London home, wondering why Coogan has disappeared for days.

This is characteristic of The Trip pictures, which tend to end well for Brydon and badly for Coogan, though not always with such an outsized flourish. In The Trip to Greece, the film’s culminating moments are rendered terribly moving by a scene in which the two finally say nothing at all. Bad news has befallen them, and for once the intercession of outside events has muted Brydon and Coogan’s otherworldly capacity to bullshit around every last thing the universe has to offer. Then, in a moment of cinematic embrace as surprising and unexpected as any since Walter and the Dude’s at Donny’s funeral, Coogan and Brydon wordlessly hug. They promise to see one another again. But there’s no telling what the future holds, and there is an awful poignance in their parting. As Cole Porter once put it: “How strange the change from major to minor, every time we say goodbye.”

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‘The Trip to Greece’ Review: Men of Twists, Turns and Familiar Jokes

In their final “Trip” movie, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon retrace Odysseus’ journey with laughs, vocal imitations and nonsense.

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By Manohla Dargis

The history of movies is also a history of armchair tourism, starting in the 19th century with the Lumière Brothers’ one-minute tours of the world. An obvious attraction of Michael Winterbottom’s four, rather lengthier “Trip” movies with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon is that they give you the opportunity to ooh and ahh at striking sites, much as you would on a cruise but without paying full freight and elbowing through hordes of strangers. At their best, the movies offer appealing virtual getaways.

It’s too bad then that “The Trip to Greece” never takes off. Like its predecessors, it hangs on the slimmest of premises: Coogan and Brydon journey to alluring destinations while trading quips, imitating the famous (Sean Connery, etc.), eating stylish chow and meta-riffing on their personas. Coogan is the self-serious performer with grand ambitions, or at least pretensions; Brydon is the somewhat more chill Everyman who goes for easy laughs. They’re competitive, which can be funny but can also be tedious, especially when their hunger for attention feels all consuming.

This journey begins on the archaeological site of Troy in northwestern Turkey with Brydon staring into the camera and, in a passable Richard Burton voice, reciting a snippet from “The Iliad.” Coogan isn’t impressed by the recitation; Brydon isn’t taken with the location. “There’s not a lot here,” he says, scanning the ruins as if looking for the nearest exit. It’s a promising nod at the reality of so much contemporary travel, which finds tourists dutifully shuffling from site to site. Acropolis, check. Temple of Athena at Delphi, check. Coogan and Brydon are shuffling too, just with concierge service.

Soon, the two are on the move, sniping and jesting and explaining the setup. The British newspaper The Observer is paying them to retrace the steps of Odysseus, so next stop: lunch! In a pretty spot in Greece, they teasingly yank each other’s chains, drop cultural references (James Joyce, Harry Potter), perfunctorily coo over the food (“lovely”) and turn to their favorite subject: themselves. As usual, Coogan’s ego gets stroked, bruised and soothed as they discuss whether he looks like Richard Gere (aah, no) and talk about his role as Stan in the movie “ Stan & Ollie .”

And so it goes as our heroes eat and joke, drive to the city of Assos, hop a boat to Lesbos and so on, as Monday gives way to Tuesday. To liven things up visually, Winterbottom throws in pretty-as-a-postcard shots, some captured with drones, natch, and adds some unconvincing narrative shadows, folding in a family illness for one of the men and a glance at the Syrian refugee crisis. It’s pleasantly innocuous at first riding shotgun with these two but I found myself progressively irritated by their lack of curiosity about the places they visit. The “Trip” movies have always been self-aware about their own weightlessness, wringing laughs by needling the men and their vanity. That’s as smart as it is convenient; this time, though, it also feels like a cop-out.

Some of my impatience has to do with the pandemic and my wistfulness about the places I’ve been and those I yearn to visit. And this movie, the final one in the series, just isn’t as funny as the others. The larger problem, though, is that by trying to give “The Trip to Greece” some heft, Winterbottom only draws attention to the series’ lack of interest in history, other people, the politics of global tourism and, well, the world. Coogan and Brydon have racked up a lot of miles but to watch them indifferently eat yet another generic haute cuisine meal in yet another interchangeable restaurant is to realize they never really left home, which might be the point but is also a bummer.

The Trip to Greece

Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. Rent or buy on Amazon, iTunes and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.

Manohla Dargis has been the co-chief film critic since 2004. She started writing about movies professionally in 1987 while earning her M.A. in cinema studies at New York University, and her work has been anthologized in several books. More about Manohla Dargis

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Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan in The Trip to Spain.

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Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon’s Trip movies dig deep into the anxieties of travel

Their adventures in angst are a sure cure for wanderlust

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Part of the appeal of travel movies and shows is the way they let the audience travel vicariously. At its best, travel entertainment can be educational, teaching viewers about places they haven’t been and cultures that might be foreign to them. But an undeniable draw is still the chance to admire beautiful scenery and plan to go there someday — or at least feel like you’re there, now that the COVID-19 pandemic has made leaving home such a safety risk. One travel series may actually help curb that sense of wanderlust, though: Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon’s The Trip .

The two actors, playing exaggerated versions of themselves, have now starred in four Trip movies, each edited together from six-episode TV series. 2010’s The Trip took them around the north of England, while 2014’s The Trip to Italy , 2017’s The Trip to Spain , and the new and final installment, The Trip to Greece , all have self-explanatory names. On each trip, Coogan and Brydon take a restaurant tour, passing through beautiful scenery and dining on mouth-watering food. If anything, the series should make travel irresistible.

But Coogan, Brydon, and director Michael Winterbottom actually pull off something more impressive: They make the trips seem fun, but also sad, frustrating, and even lonely. Traveling doesn’t solve the problems Coogan and Brydon are dealing with in their home lives. A vacation may be an attempt to take a break from personal issues, but there’s no way to completely leave them behind. Their troubles may be worlds away from viewers’, as their lives as successful actors are hardly normal, but they become accessible through their open portrayals. The honesty Winterbottom captures about the problems of celebrities — who should theoretically be so well off that they wouldn’t have a care in the world — and their more domestic worries, such as providing for their families or finding work, aren’t that far removed from the average person’s concerns.

The most commonly referenced element of the Trip movies are Coogan and Brydon’s dueling impressions of figures ranging from Michael Caine to the Batman villain Bane. However, Winterbottom also uses these trips to dig deeper, using the two actors’ journeys through historical landmarks as a pretext for them to interrogate their own mortality. Coogan is unmarried and free to become romantically entangled abroad (he’s seen both attempting to and succeeding in currying the favor of women he meets), but he struggles to connect with his children and to combat feelings of impermanence. Brydon is happily married, and can’t go as wild as Coogan does while traveling, but he has an anchor in his family.

The two of them also want to be taken more seriously, not just seen as comedians. As they travel, they deal with that desire in different ways. Coogan constantly refers to his Oscar-nominated script for the 2013 film Philomena to prove his success, but finds that nobody cares much about it. His profile hasn’t risen much at all in the seven years since that movie: His calls to his agent about new work get redirected to an assistant. Brydon, who hasn’t done as much dramatic work, reassures himself with the fact that he’s achieved stability, and that his legacy will be carried on through his children. Under Winterbottom’s direction, the pair’s comic stylings often give way to such introspection, and moments of silence and solitude.

Even though they’re on the most marvelous trips imaginable, it’s clear that scenic vistas and haute cuisine alone aren’t enough to make Coogan and Brydon feel fulfilled. Their problems don’t magically go away because they’re abroad, and though they get along, they sometimes bristle at each other, too, as is almost inevitable when traveling with company. (For a more explicit, condensed version of the lessons they’re expressing, try the recent Saturday Night Live sketch where Adam Sandler plays an exhausted tour-company host: “If you’re sad where you are, and then you get on a plane to Italy, the you in Italy will be the same sad you from before, just in a new place.”)

Watching the movies is a delight, though. Each installment of the series feels like checking in on old friends, if your old friends were two of the sharpest comedians alive. The rapport between Coogan and Brydon is so genuine — they’re already so invested in each other — that the audience becomes a third guest on the trips rather than a voyeur. That feeling of inclusion and closeness makes the usual vicarious experience of a travel series even more potent. During a global pandemic, however, that ability to travel along with the hosts is a blessing for a different reason.

As appealing as being anywhere but home might seem right now, it’s reassuring to remember that traveling has its ups and downs, too. The Trip movies capture that balance through the (new and pre-existing) crises that the fictionalized versions of Coogan and Brydon experience. Winterbottom never goes so far as to make traveling seem abjectly awful — who wouldn’t want to escape to a beach right now, if it could be done safely? — but he makes it clear that no getaway will be completely perfect, either. As the wait for a coronavirus vaccine stretches on, the reminder that something that seems like a perfect reprieve has its flaws, too, comes as a relief.

The Trip to Greece will be available on VOD on May 22.

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The Trip Must End

In the final installment of their fictional travel series, steve coogan and rob brydon let us live vicariously one last time..

Though I’ve long been a fan of the Trip films, I was not prepared to get emotional over the announcement of a new one. Learning of the impending May release of The Trip to Greece — the fourth and final entry in the series that follows British comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, playing fictional versions of themselves, as they travel lovely roads, eat lovely meals, and do lovely impressions, all the while hilariously sniping at each other over personal and professional matters — led to some complicated feelings. Here was a movie about all the things we can’t do right now, not that most of us could ever really do them: Go for a long car ride in another country with a friend-colleague-rival (at least, that’s how Coogan and Brydon present themselves in these efforts), stay in a hotel, eat in a nice restaurant, and then move on to the next location.

The films, directed and conceived by Michael Winterbottom and partly improvised by Coogan and Brydon, aren’t indulgent wallows in food and privilege, however: Through the heightened, fictionalized portraits of Coogan and Brydon’s petty professional jealousies, they also interrogate the cocoon of celebrity culture. We always get the sense that reality is slowly catching up to these gents. Never has this been truer than in 2020’s The Trip to Greece , which alongside the impressions and the bickering and the delicious meals, finds Coogan and Brydon confronting the agony of the refugee crisis, as well as personal loss in their own lives. (The films all start off airing in longer series form in Britain, and Greece premiered on TV in the U.K. in February.) But for all the darkness, it still manages to be quite charming.

Coogan and Brydon have always been upfront about the fact that the two men presented onscreen are not really their true selves. (They’ve been outfitted with different families, for starters.) But when I get them together for a Zoom one dreary March morning, they slip right into (gently, collegially, lovingly) taking the piss out of each other. Brydon is at home in London. Coogan is at home in Essex, behind him a monitor displaying footage from a series of security cameras, a fact that Brydon does not leave unmentioned. Brydon is late to our chat; Coogan has noticed …

Hi, Rob. Rob Brydon: Hi, so sorry. I totally forgot.

Steve Coogan: Well, that doesn’t entirely surprise me.

RB: It’s very hard to remember things, I find, at the moment.

SC: Because you’re rushed off your feet, are you? [ Laughs. ]

RB: There’s an interesting thing here. I’ve got an 11-year-old and an 8-year-old, and I think the experience at the moment of people who have young children is very different from the experience of the people who don’t. The people who don’t are watching films, reading books, it’s rather lovely.

SC: I don’t envy you. I’m being facetious. But can you go out?

RB: We go out once a day. One day we do a walk, the other day we do a bike ride. But we don’t come into contact with anyone. We’ve got a big garden, so we can be in that.

SC: You can’t cycle around your garden, can you?

RB: No, no, we cycle the streets. You can cycle the streets as long as you don’t come into contact.

SC: Isn’t that a bit hazardous?

RB: No, because the roads are so quiet.

How are you guys holding up? What the hell is life like for you? RB: Are you alright, Steve? Are you okay?

SC: I am okay. I’m here with my daughter and her boyfriend. Just the three of us. They’re obviously quite happy with each other, and I just kind of hang out with them saying, “What are you guys doing?,” which is slightly awkward. I think they’d be fine without me here, but I’m not sure I’d be fine without them here. So, I’ve been doing that and, you know, going for runs, and Skype writing because that’s what I was doing anyway. I’m carrying on with that, and trying to imagine somehow that the things I write might still somehow be relevant in a post-corona world. I think anyone who’s pitching anything or making anything after this will claim that it’s somehow relevant to coronavirus, whatever it is. But I’m very fortunate. I did some shopping for some people, locally, and the woman asked, “Do you want some money?” And I said, “No, that’s fine. Just make some contribution to some charity.” And my writing partner said, “What you really said was, ‘Just make sure you tell people about it.’” [ Laughs. ] Which I’m doing now.

RB: You know what I would love now is if that as we’re doing this we see behind you, Steve, people breaking into your house and stealing your stuff on the screen, while you’re talking, unaware of what’s going on.

SC: [ Glances behind him. ] Security cameras! And I’m claiming that I care about the local community.

RB: [ Laughs. ] Like a little old woman … [ inaudible ].

You broke up a little bit there, Rob. RB: It doesn’t bear repeating.

SC: Oh, come on, I like it when you’re forced to repeat a punchline after the moment’s gone.

I know a lot of people thought they’d have more time to read, and do other things, but what they’re discovering is they can’t focus on anything, due to the anxiety and stress. SC: I think people are still in a state of shock. Because it all happened rather quickly. But when people adjust to the new reality that’s going to be here for at least a few months …

RB: I’ve actually been reading Alan Bennett’s diaries again. I find those incredibly calming and relaxing, this really lovely ordered world.

SC: I watched Brief Encounter the other day, which was really, really wonderful.

RB: I bet it moves nice and slowly. We showed the boys The Great Escape and really enjoyed it.

SC: It’s great when you can enjoy things vicariously a second time around through your children. Having said that, I just got through the second season of El Chapo and I’m looking forward to the third.

Before watching Trip to Greece this weekend, I rewatched all three previous Trip movies. I started with The Trip to Spain , and there’s that moment early on, where you’re at a restaurant, sitting outside, and it starts to rain and everybody crowds inside. It’s the kind of annoying little thing that everyone has probably experienced at some point in their lives. And yet, I started tearing up watching it, because here was this incredibly common human moment that I can’t have right now. And who knows when I’ll ever get to have it. I was surprised at how it struck me. SC: Wow. When people come out of prison they often talk about the visceral pleasure of feeling rain.

RB: I’ve been seeing lots of things like that at the moment. I see something on television or a film, and I see people meeting somewhere, and think, Wow, that’ll be nice to be able to do that again.

I found The Trip to Greece to be quite poignant. It does seem like the saddest entry in the series. We get this sense that reality is catching up to you guys. SC: What Michael [Winterbottom] does with Rob and I is that whatever peccadillos or idiosyncrasies we have, we just sort of build on them. Because he’s middle-aged like we’re middle-aged, so he just addresses those things. What’s the word? It takes the curse off these things. When we talk about these things, or laugh at these things, they suddenly become diminished. These big questions — the anxiety of life — become somehow just put in a box. And if you make art out of it … What’s that Nora Ephron line? “Everything is copy.”

RB: Oh, you’re speaking of Nora Ephron. You know in The Trip to Greece where I say, “I did a Skype audition,” that was for Nancy Meyers.

SC: Oh, yes, Nancy. I auditioned for her.

RB: Yeah, me too. I didn’t get it.

SC: I didn’t get it either. I auditioned for The Holiday , and she said I wasn’t sexy enough.

RB: I didn’t audition for that. No, this was a little thing. But it was very funny because she was very flattering, and of course I’m very good with flattery. I respond very well to it. And then I did my bit, and of course didn’t get it.

SC: So, basically, you peaked at the small talk.

RB: Yeah! I think I’m good at that. I very rarely get a part that I audition for.

SC: I’m the same. I remember once this director said, “Can you stop saying the name of the character when you talk about it and just say ‘I’?” Right? So when I’m writing Alan Partridge, I say, “Alan does this, and Alan does that.” I don’t say “ I do this,” you know. I just say, “Alan.” And I was talking about a part with this director, saying “he,” referring to the character. “ He does this and then I think he does this,” and [the director] says, “Can you stop saying ‘he’ and say ‘I’, I think it will help you.” And I found myself saying, “Fuck off.” That’s why auditioning doesn’t go well for Rob or, I’d say, me.

Do you ever hear from chefs who felt they or their food were portrayed unfairly on the show? SC: I was at L’Enclume only two months ago. L’Enclume is in the first Trip , in the Lake District, not far from me. I went there for dinner, and the chef, Simon Rogan, who’s very much a respected Michelin star chef, came up and went, “Hey, how are you?” And it was all very friendly, but he still mentioned Ray Winstone’s snot. I don’t know if that’s in the film version [or only in the BBC series version], but there’s this one particular dish that had a green liquid in it that looked a bit like — and I don’t know how we arrived at this, I can’t remember — but I do remember that I compared it to Ray Winstone as a gangster forcing someone to eat his mucus. And for Simon Rogan, the chef … I mean this was ten years ago and whenever I see him he still brings it up in conversation. You know, we were very, very nice, and very complimentary, but it’s funny that that’s the thing that sticks in his mind about the show.

RB: We just praise the food because it’s always very nice, although I’m often not paying that much attention to it. People often say to me, “Which is the best food?” I’m just thinking, What am I going to say next? I’m trying to be inventive and creative. What I do remember are the meals we would eat in the evenings when we weren’t filming.

SC: Yeah. Do you remember, Rob, I think one of the most pleasurable meals we had was in King’s Landing. I think it was the Angel Pub in Yorkshire, and it was fried breakfast, after we had been to Bolton Abbey …

RB: It was simple ingredients.

SC: Yeah, but not the normal simple ingredients. There weren’t fresh, clean ingredients. It was a fried breakfast. It was egg, bacon, sausage, tomato, beans.

RB: But done beautifully.

SC: I remember sitting outside that pub by the road and thinking that was lovely, just … yeah. I’d go back there, you know. I’d go back there.

RB: Well, I went back to Holbeck Ghyll, which is in the Lake District, with my wife and my two younger children …

SC: Did they sit you by the window?

RB: I think, yes, we sat in the same seat, and I felt like the returning hero, and I thought, Surely we’re not going to be charged for this meal . But we were.

SC: You know what, Rob, you say that, but I have to say I have been back there several times, and my brother-in-law and my sister who both are very normal people who work in the public sector helping people with special needs, I told the proprietor and they stayed there for three nights, having Michelin-star dinners every night, and the whole thing was free.

RB: And yet one-half of the original team who made that thing has to pay. Where’s the fairness? [ Laughs. ]

SC: I think that it’s basically socialism in action. Those who can afford it pay. Those who can’t are subsidized. That’s fair. That’s my political worldview in action. So, it was right that you were charged.

RB: I’m struggling with it. A discount would have been something.

How often do you hear back from the subjects of your impressions? RB: We did a thing with Michael Caine at the Albert Hall, and he was very nice. You can see it . Anthony Hopkins I met in Los Angeles and he said, [ does an Anthony Hopkins voice ] “I loved The Trip. Loved The Trip .” This was after we’d done the first one and the Italian one hadn’t come out. And I said, “Well, in this new one, the Italian one, we’re on a yacht and we do you in The Bounty .” And he started doing it! He started going, “Turn your back away, Mr. Fryer!” And then I was doing it back to him. We were in a car and I got rather giddy. Hopkins! Hopkins occupies a sort of Brando-like position in the business. I think he is the equal of any actor, if you look at what he has put onscreen and onstage. And there he was, and he was doing it, you know, right next to me. And I’m doing it back at him! It was all I could do not to cry. It was quite overwhelming.

SC: Gosh, yeah … I’m quite envious of that.

Has anybody you’ve done impressions of reacted negatively? RB: I don’t think so. I think most people are flattered by it.

SC: Oh, me! That’s me. When you do me. I react slightly negatively.

RB: I do Steve Coogan and he’s a prickly customer. He doesn’t like it.

SC: [ Laughs. ] Probably the most negative reaction is me when he does me. That’s the truth, yeah. I do find it a little bit uncomfortable when he does it. You know how some people don’t like it when you take photographs of them, because they think you’re taking their soul? I feel like somehow it’s distilling some DNA, like a little bit of witchcraft. There’s something discombobulating about it. I don’t think it’s quite me, but there’s a certain familiarity about it. It’s reductive, that’s what it is. Because I think what I do is quite interesting, and if you do it, it’s almost like you can sort of bottle it and sell it in Boots, and that worries me, you know.

RB: And he’s telling the truth when he says that.

SC: Yes, yes. Yes. [ Laughs. ]

Rob, I hear that you declined to meet Al Pacino once. RB: Yeah, that is true. I was doing The Huntsman: Winter’s War . A big hit. It exploded at the box office. It bombed. And I played a dwarf. Great fun. And Jessica Chastain was on it, and one weekend she said, “Al is in town. We’re going to meet up for drinks. Do you want to come?” Now, I had a school event on, so I had to go to some parents’ thing. I could have got out of it, but I chose not to because I thought, Well, what’s going to happen? I’ve ended up meeting a lot of my acting and musical heroes, but there are some then who I think … Well, I’ve already got a great relationship with Al Pacino in my head, you know? So let’s just leave it at that.

Both of you have done work over the years that blurs the line between reality and fiction, but with the first Trip , was there any kind of adjustment, in that you really were playing these versions of yourselves? Was there a question of how much reality to put in? SC: I remember having a chat with Rob and saying, “Let’s risk offending each other and not take it personally, to try and find funny things.” I don’t know that we actually shook hands. And that pretty much worked, I think, 95 percent of the time. I got tetchy sometimes, but by and large that held, that sort of gentleman’s ribbing.

RB: The difference with the first one, from my perspective, was that it was very new, and we were going into it thinking, Well, what is this? You know, because Michael [Winterbottom]’s pitch was as a series initially, although he was saying he was going to make a film. It was six half-hours. And I remember thinking, How on Earth can we improvise enough good stuff for six half-hours? I was convinced we wouldn’t. The thing that surprised me about the first one when I watched it was the melancholy. We were traveling home every weekend, because it was done in Britain, and I’d come home and say to my wife, “Oh yeah, Steve was very funny, we did some very funny stuff.” But of course I wasn’t aware of the way Michael was shooting it, and the music he was going to put on it, and the long, slow shots. And that’s part of its success: You’ve got us two who, broadly speaking, follow traditional comic instincts and timings, and then you’ve got Michael who is a very un-manipulative filmmaker. He just wants to tell the story. Just, blomp , there it is, there’s the story. There are often times where I think, “Well, why didn’t you cut here, or cut a bit sooner on the joke?” But it was better that he didn’t, because it made it very individual.

SC: I agree with Rob there. And in fact I think Rob and I were sort of trying to get involved with Michael in the process in the first Trip , and then after that we just didn’t bother anymore.

RB: Futile, futile.

SC: Pointless! Pointless! And a waste of energy because Michael’s very good at what he does. These films are Michael Winterbottom films, and we’re just in them doing stuff.

Rob, I remember a story you told about how in The Trip to Italy , after you had the affair with the deckhand, your wife was hearing from people the next day saying, “Oh my God, I’m so sorry this happened.” RB: Yeah, she was taking the boys to school, and a teacher came up, put a hand on her shoulder, and said, “This must be a very difficult time for you.”

SC: That is very worrying that your kids were going to a school where a teacher can’t make that distinction.

RB: A state school. It’s more of a commune, really.

SC: What’s funny is if you say things that are self-critical or portray yourself in that negative light, as we do in The Trip , it sort of it nixes those who ought to say things like “In reality,” because you think, what can they say? Not only have I criticized myself, I’ve turned it into something creative and helped pay the rent with it.

RB: I always find it very funny that some people watch it and take it simply as a reality show, as if literally he’s just following us around and these things are really happening.

SC: I mean, while we’re having dinner, you think that might be real. But when I sleep with the receptionist at the hotel, how they think I allowed a film crew into the bedroom to —

RB: How she allowed you into the bedroom, I think would be the …

SC: Well, that’s more believable.

I think part of it is that reality TV has trained people to accept these things as real. Because that sort of thing would happen on, you know, The Real World . SC: That’s very true. This is such a weird hybrid.

RB: I can’t speak for Steve here, but I don’t really watch those programs because I’m a bit of a snob.

SC: Yeah. But I do.

It’s a bit of a reality series, but it’s also something of a movie franchise. For people like me, you know, The Trip is almost our version of a superhero franchise. There’s something familiar about it, there’s the template, but then the variations are what make it fun. And you guys are ending it right around the time The Avengers and Star Wars are sort of ending as well. RB: It’s our Endgame , yeah.

SC: We’re superheroes for middle-aged, middle-class, white professionals.

Part Two of this interview will run next month. The Trip to Greece will be available in the U.S. on May 22, 2020. The previous Trip films are currently streaming on IFC Films Unlimited.

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Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon on Why It’s Time to End ‘The Trip’ Franchise

By Brent Lang

Executive Editor

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“ The Trip to Greece ” marks the last stop on one of cinema’s most unlikely franchise journeys.

The film, which once again finds comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon playing exaggerated versions of themselves, has all the familiar elements that gave the series its cult status in the U.S. There are long, luxurious meals consumed in beautiful locations, interspersed with dueling impressions from two talented mimics channeling everyone from Mick Jagger to Michael Caine.

Beginning with 2010’s “The Trip,” which found the men on a foodie tour of the North of England, the pair have also added Spain and Italy to their itineraries. But the movies are more than just travelogues. What gives “The Trip” its potency is that intermixed with five-star meals and stunning vistas is a meditation on mortality and celebrity. In advance of the U.S. debut of “The Trip to Greece” on May 22, Coogan and Brydon spoke with Variety about why they’ve decided to give their passports a break and end the series, and how they’re weathering the coronavirus shutdown.

Director Michael Winterbottom says this is the final film. Why are you wrapping up after four movies?

Popular on Variety

Steve Coogan: To avoid jumping the shark. We eked it out by making jokes about it becoming tired and repetitive, but even that joke can become tired and repetitive. It’s the old showbiz adage of leave them wanting more, not leave them wanting less.

Rob Brydon: I was ready to finish it. That’s not to say that years down the road it won’t be interesting to revisit it. But right now I think we should just quit while we’re ahead.

It sounds like you’re leaving the door open to someday returning?

Brydon: One day, when time has passed and the years have been as kind or cruel as they will be, it might be nice to come back and see us again further down the road.

Coogan: It feels like the next one would have to be almost sort of a retrospective or a reckoning on age. I’m sure we’ll have some observations on the autumn of life. Bloody hell, did I just say that?

Are there any locations you’d still like to visit?

Coogan: If we did something in the future, I’d like to return to England. It’s kind of that old T.S. Eliot thing about coming back to where you’ve started, so you can know the place for the first time. That feels poetically correct. We talked about going to America at one point. The thing about Europe is you get a lot of bang for your buck. There’s a lot to see in such a limited space. In America everything is so spread out. We didn’t want to shoot ourselves getting on and off airplanes.

Have you been surprised that “The Trip” became a franchise?

Brydon: So much of it is Steve and myself improvising, and I always worried that we weren’t going to improvise enough good stuff. The fact that we’ve sustained it over four installments amazes me.

Coogan: The contemplative quality, that was a shock.

Brydon: Yes, I was unaware there’d be the melancholic music and the long slow shots of the landscape. When I saw the first episode I was so surprised by how slow it was, but that became its strength.

Why do you think the slow pace is its strength?

Coogan: We live in a time where movie studios and broadcasters assume that the entire world has attention deficit disorder. The YouTube generation’s mind is constantly shifting. I assume these movies are like an oasis in a desert of busyness, but I have no idea how they are received. I don’t engage with social media. I get emails from the odd friend about them.

Why don’t you use social media?

Coogan: I see so many people get sucked into a vortex of pointlessness. I feel intellectual discourse is stimulating, but rarely achieves anything other than people expressing their points of view. No one gets their opinions changed by information, by showing them statistics. But people do get persuaded by story, by emotion. Sometimes that can be nefarious like Donald Trump, who rarely deals in facts. He just deals in dog whistles that elicit Pavlovian responses.

Brydon: I’ve got to come in here — will you give the guy a break, please?

Rob, you are active on Twitter. What do you like about it?

Brydon: I used to say it’s like a very nice country pub that you can go into and exchange views, but then somebody would come over and knock you and hit your pint and a fight would start. There’s so much darkness and negativity in it, but it can also be a good way to communicate.

Coogan: Sometimes I think, “Oh God, I don’t have any social media presence. I wonder if Rob will do something for me.” I might do a tour in a couple of years. Rob, will you tweet about my tour?

Brydon: I would do it gladly.

Coogan: For free tickets?

Brydon: I wouldn’t need that Steve, because I wouldn’t want to see the show. I would want nothing more than to make you happy.

You’ve been doing these films for a decade. How have you changed?

Coogan: Now that I’m getting older, I rail against acerbic cynicism and people who are self-consciously edgy. I don’t care about style over substance. Whatever you do, try to offer some hope and say something inclusive without being naive or overly sentimental.

Do people think that "The Trip" is a documentary and this is how you are in real life?

Brydon: You’re playing a fairground-mirror version of yourself in which some parts of you are expanded and some are contracted.

Coogan: It gets confusing because sometimes I’ll say something in “The Trip'” which is a statement of fact and sometimes I’ll say something which is a bona fide lie. Michael will say, “talk about chasing a Spanish assistant across Europe.” Well, I’ve never done that, but it’s conceivable that I would. It doesn’t bother me if people think it’s me. The people who know me know it’s not me. Rob doesn’t go around doing stupid voices all the time. I’m not as precious as I appear to be in “The Trip.” We’re doing a yin yang, because it makes for better comedy. The Venn diagram of us has a lot of overlapping. If you saw Rob and I having dinner, it would be less cantankerous.

Brydon: All you’d see would be two hot guys, just shooting the breeze really.

Are there impressions that Steve does that you can’t do Rob and vice versa?

Brydon: There’s one that he does better than me, without a doubt. He does Martin Sheen, which I simply cannot do.

Coogan: I hadn’t done any impersonations for about 20 years. Wasn’t particularly interested in them. Had spent a lot of my career trying to get away from them. Michael said, “can you do some impersonations?” I thought Christ. And I honestly believe that any entertainer over 40, who makes his living doing impressions needs to take a long, hard look at himself in the mirror.

Brydon: I agree with Steve. Any person over the age of 60, who does impressions for a living needs to take a long, hard look in the mirror. I mean that’s not true. Martin Short or Dana Carvey are amazing at what they do. I find the term “impressionist” to be somewhat reductive. I kind of bristle when I’m introduced as an impressionist.

Is it weird to be opening a film about traveling at a time when everyone is stuck at home?

Brydon: You hope that it provides some escapism. We did this last year, but it seems like a lifetime ago, and just very different circumstances.

Coogan: Maybe the human race can clean its act up. Hopefully the thing that we learn from this won’t just be to bump elbows.

Brydon: It would be so dispiriting if, after all of this, nothing changed in terms of climate awareness and the environment and that whole thing.

Coogan: They said the free market would answer all our problems, except when there’s an emergency and then suddenly it can’t help us anymore. However they dress it up, we realize we need some emergency socialism right now. But I do think that we all now realize globally that government has a role, except maybe for the f–king rednecks with their semiautomatics. Even some moderate conservatives will start to think that you need big government.

Are you sad that because of the coronavirus most people won’t see the film in theaters?

Coogan: It was never going to be a superhero franchise thing.

Brydon: I think what you mean is that even fewer people will see it in theaters. It doesn’t bother me. You must interview a lot of people who absolutely live for film! But if people see it and enjoy it, that’s all I care about.

Coogan: It’s something we make on our own terms. It’s more art than business. Someone once said to me the secret to a long career is never to peak.

Brydon: That was like something James Corden told me that Bob Balaban said to him: Never be hot. Always be warm.

Coogan: Well, that’s true. “The Trip” has never been hot in America. It’s always been simmering away in a pot in the corner like some soup. It’s a very nice broth.

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Product Description

When Steve Coogan (24 Hour Party People, Tropic Thunder) is asked by the Observer to tour the country's finest restaurants, he envisions it as the perfect getaway with his beautiful girlfriend. But, when she backs out on him, he has no one to accompany him but his best friend and source of eternal aggravation, Rob Brydon (A Cock and Bull Story). As the brilliant comic duo, free styling with flair, drive each other mad with constant competition and showdowns of competing impressions of famous celebrities, the ultimate odd couple realize in the end a rich amount about not only good food, but the nature of fame, relationships and their own lives.

Product details

MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ NR (Not Rated)
Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 0.6 x 5.3 x 7.5 inches; 0.8 ounces
Item model number ‏ : ‎ 22035699
Director ‏ : ‎ Michael Winterbottom
Media Format ‏ : ‎ Color, NTSC, Multiple Formats, Widescreen
Run time ‏ : ‎ 1 hour and 52 minutes
Release date ‏ : ‎ October 11, 2011
Actors ‏ : ‎ Steve Coogan, Robert Brydon, Rob Brydon, Claire Keelan, Margo Stilley
Producers ‏ : ‎ Melissa Parmenter, Andrew Eaton
Studio ‏ : ‎ IFC Independent Film
ASIN ‏ : ‎ B005E7SEM0
Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1
#12,589 in Comedy (Movies & TV)

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‘The Trip to Greece’ Review: Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan End Comedy Series with Bittersweet Dessert

David ehrlich.

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Now arriving at its fourth (and allegedly final) installment, Michael Winterbottom ’s “ The Trip ” series has established Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan as one of the funniest comic duos this side of Laurel and Hardy, but these movies — for all of their dueling Michael Caine impressions and Michelin-delicious meals — have always been suffused with a deep and abiding sense of sadness. They’re not shy about that: The regret, loneliness, and middle-aged malaise come wrapped in a contraceptive of “Philomena” jokes and belittling jabs about Brydon’s career as a “light entertainer,” but the darkness is ever-present, like a backseat passenger these men drive around during their circular road trips around Europe. Instead of a laugh track, every punchline is followed by an existential twang of self-doubt.

Each episode has been a touch bleaker than the last. 2010’s “The Trip,” in which Brydon and Coogan (playing ultra-narcissistic, compulsively performative versions of themselves) spent a week eating at northern England’s finest restaurants as part of an article the latter was assigned to write for a newspaper, was as heartsick as it was hilarious. “The Trip to Italy” repeated the same formula in a sunnier location, but ended on a stinging note of Rohmerian sadness. “ The Trip to Spain ” made great sport of the series’ purgatorial repetition — underlining the idea that Brydon and Coogan need each other to validate the silliness of their shared existence — only to defy expectations by veering towards grave danger in the final seconds.

That seemed like it might be the last we ever saw of “Steve Coogan,” but the boys are back for one last bite. A fans-only affair that presumes you’ve already digested the previous three courses, “ The Trip to Greece ” is like being served an irresistible dessert course when your stomach is already bursting at the seams — you can’t help but clean your plate, even if you know it’s going to make you sick. And from an early trip to a refugee camp to a climactic encounter with death, the film makes good on the fact that Greece is the birthplace of drama. While the laughs are still easy and frequent, this time around they feel more like the exception than the rule, and the final moments irrevocably tip the scales toward the unironic sobriety the series has been flirting with for so long (a replica of the Trojan horse comes to symbolize how this supposed romp sneaks past your defenses). Fans won’t be happy to see “The Trip” saga hit the brakes, but at this rate the next installment would have been a Mike Leigh movie. Although this Coogan is so proud of his status as a serious actor that he’d probably love that.

Like every film in the franchise before it, the theatrical cut of “The Trip to Greece” has been trimmed down from a 180-minute cut that aired across six episodes on the BBC. Rather than prune the footage into a greatest hits package, Winterbottom has edited it in a way that accentuates the story’s natural choppiness. Brydon and Coogan can hardly seem to believe they’re doing this again, or understand how they got there; ditching the usual prologue, “The Trip to Greece” shifts into gear feeling like a delightfully idyllic “Groundhog Day.”

This series has always been shaped by a comedy-feedback loop that sees Brydon and Coogan as a pair of vultures who are circling each other in search of validation, but as they get older that dance has started to seem more like a death spiral. Originality is overrated, they agree, and repeating yourself is inevitable for anyone who’s been alive for long enough to hear their own echoes. On the other hand, it can be ominous to visit a new place for the first time and feel like you’ve already been there before. After following in the footsteps of Lord Byron and then cos-playing Don Quixote, our blokes end their 10-year journey by retracing another: Odysseus’ trip (is there a better word for it?) back home from battle.

It’s a trek that wends through Turkey and Macedonia, and gives Brydon and Coogan ample opportunity to riff on the nature and value of imitation. “The Trip to Greece” never threatens to become “Certified Copy” or anything, but Coogan is clearly rattled by the observation that his BAFTA nod for “Stan & Ollie” was for playing someone else, and his father’s illness looms over the movie in a way that leaves him feeling absent from his own life. Even the best Roger Moore impressions can be hard to enjoy for someone who doesn’t feel comfortable returning to a clear identity of their own (they’re still hilarious for the rest of us, though it’s even funnier when Brydon and Coogan each try to re-enact both the Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier parts of the drill scene from “Marathon Man”).

Previous “Trips” were informed by the assumption that Brydon and Coogan were hungry for more, but this one frequently asks whether or not they want to keep going. “Do you want to continue?” a waitress asks in the middle of a meal, nearly inciting a complete psychic collapse from the two aging diners who ogle her every time she leaves their table. Brydon and Coogan laugh off the question, only to find themselves bewitched by three sirens and swimming a race against each other as Philip Glass’ mournful “Koyaanisqatsi” score blares over the soundtrack.

It’s one of several amusing music cues that splits the difference between unchecked solipsism and taking the piss, fitting accompaniment for a movie in which our privileged white lads walk directly into the fourth wall at full speed (Coogan has a “Curb Your Enthusiasm”-worthy encounter with “Greed” co-star Kareem Alkabbani, a Syrian refugee whose name he can’t remember). Even today, Greece is a land of journeys, a fact underscored by how Brydon and Coogan are only there to dick around.

With its two leads distracted by the nagging sense they ought to be somewhere else, “The Trip to Greece” never gets into quite the same rhythm as its predecessors. It’s a tricky balancing act that Winterbottom sometimes wobbles along. He knows that anyone watching this movie would happily pay to see Brydon and Coogan riff through their old bits for hours on end, but also that the series would become just as egocentric as its characters if it let our pleasure interfere with their mortal panic.

So you spend most of the movie waiting for the other shoe to drop, a process that includes the usual assortment of casual sex and energy-sapping dream sequences, with the latter taking a detour into Bergman territory as Winterbottom tries to steel audiences for the life-or-death stakes of its coda. It isn’t much of a spoiler to say that Brydon and Coogan arrive at their own definitions of home before all is said and done (though Brydon’s is invariably sweeter and less defined), even if the film doesn’t put too fine a point on how they’ve guided each other there. And while fans will miss them, it’s hard not to be happy for both of these men, who — like Odysseus confirming his identity to his wife Penelope by telling her about the bed he carved for them out of an olive tree — are each still recognized by the people who know them best.

IFC Films will release “The Trip to Greece” on demand on Friday, May 22.

The Trip to Spain

Actors Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon embark on a six-part episodic road trip through Europe. This time they're in Spain, sampling the restaurants, eateries, and sights along the way. Actors Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon embark on a six-part episodic road trip through Europe. This time they're in Spain, sampling the restaurants, eateries, and sights along the way. Actors Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon embark on a six-part episodic road trip through Europe. This time they're in Spain, sampling the restaurants, eateries, and sights along the way.

Michael Winterbottom
Steve Coogan
Rebecca Johnson
47 User reviews
71 Critic reviews
66 Metascore
1 win & 1 nomination total

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Trivia Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon talk about the song "The Windmills of Your Mind" sung by Noel Harrison and it is played at the film's ending. A different version of this song by The King's Singers was played at the end of the final episode of Coogan's TV show, Alan Wide Shut (2002) , where Alan goes to see the unsold copies of his autobiography being pulped.
Goofs Steve says while at lunch that a version of 12 Years a Slave was made by HBO "about ten years ago". No such version exists but PBS did make a version in 1984 entitled Solomon Northup's Odyssey.

Rob : Do you know what the Welsh word for "Carrot" is?

Rob : Moron

Connections Edited from The Trip (2010)
Soundtracks The Windmills of your Mind Music by Michel Legrand Lyrics by Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman Performed by Noel Harrison

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JohnDeSando
Sep 11, 2017
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August 11, 2017 (United States)
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Revolution Films
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Aug 13, 2017

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Runtime 1 hour 48 minutes

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‘The Trip to Greece’ Review: Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan End Comedy Series with Bittersweet Dessert

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