Review: College Road Trip (U)

4:58pm Tuesday 26th August 2008

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Starring: Martin Lawrence, Raven-Symone, Kim E Whitley, Eshaya Draper, Donny Osmond, Molly Ephraim. Director: Roger Kumble.

If it weren’t drizzled in so much emotional syrup that you can almost feel your molars rotting in your gums, Roger Kumble’s comedy might be a little creepy.

The central character is a police chief whose idea of fatherly love is to publicly smother his teenage daughter with hugs and kisses to ward off potential boyfriends.

He has a photograph of his little girl beside the bed, in a frame adorned with hearts and a hand scrawled I LOVE YOU DAD, and the living room cupboard heaves with countless videotapes of every cutesy second of her formative years.

In any other film, his obsession would warrant a telephone call to child protection services.

In College Road Trip, however, the father’s inability to let go of his flesh and blood is merely a starting point for a tiresome and achingly predictable journey of self-discovery.

En route, there are tears, karaoke, a flying pig and confessions of the heart worthy of the inside of a cheap greetings card: “Dads don’t know everything. We just do the best we can.”

In the case of Kumble’s film, his best just isn’t good enough, not by a long way.

James Porter (Lawrence) is a control freak, who has always wrapped his daughter Melanie (Raven-Symone) in cotton wool.

Ever since his baby girl was born, he has earmarked nearby Northwestern for her university education because of its academic record and “I can get there in 28 minutes”.

Seventeen-year-old Melanie has her heart set on Georgetown, hundreds of miles away in Washington, D.C.

She lands an interview and James insists on driving his daughter to the campus.

When the wheels quite literally come off their road trip, the Porters rely on maniacally cheerful Doug Greenhut (Osmond) and his ultra-perky daughter Wendy (Ephraim) to complete their grand adventure.

College Road Trip continues Lawrence’s unbroken run of flops, contriving some truly ridiculous situations to force the inevitable reconciliation, like a tandem father-daughter skydive.

A lip-synched song and dance sequence on a bus full of Japanese tourists should bring health and safety-conscious James out in a cold sweat.

Rather than scolding his daughter for distracting the driver then merrily skipping down the aisle of a moving vehicle, he claps along proudly to Melanie’s rendition of “Double Dutch Bus” with rows of grinning, racial stereotypes as backing vocalists.

Osmond and Ephraim’s deranged, show tunes warbling double act provides fleeting comic relief.

An entire 83 minutes of their whooping would be exhausting though, so Kumble limits their hyperactive antics to a few choice scenes.

Lawrence alternates between smug and outraged while Raven-Symone squeals her lines at increasingly high frequencies, edging towards ultrasonic as the end credits roll.

”This is cruelty!” shrieks Melanie, referring to her father’s reluctance to grant her independence.

The same could be said of Kumble’s picture.