Audrey Sullivan (Ashley Park) is a successful lawyer, who was adopted by Americans as a child but has never been to China, doesn't speak the language,...
' with Andrew Scott, Briain Gleeson, and Hugh O'Connor. 'Joy Ride' is another example, taking Asian-American female actors and planting them in the middle of a road-trip comedy. The difference here is that thrown into the mixture is an affecting story about adoption and identity, which gets lost between the cocaine-fuelled madness and sex jokes.
Cast-wise, 'Joy Ride' has all of the archetypes suitably covered - Audrey, the leader, is played with preening precision by Ashley Park. Sherry Cola is the wildcard, while Sabrina Wu has the social misfit role squared away perfectly. Stephanie Hsu, meanwhile, plays the once-crazy-now-domesticated friend, much in the same way that Ed Helms portrayed it in 'The Hangover'. Their dynamic is much the same, with the hijinks they find themselves in just as funny and off-the-wall.
The final twenty minutes of the movie, however, divert away from all of this to go into a heartfelt story about adoption with Ashley Park's character. It's an intriguing topic, one that was explored in much greater detail in '