大学之旅 College Road Trip review by Ethan Alter

In >College Road Trip, one-time bad boy of comedy Martin Lawrence stars opposite a Disney Channel superstar, a pig and Donny Osmond, in that order. I'll pause to let that sink in for a moment. The guy who shot up drug lords alongside Will Smith in Bad Boys and battled a psycho one-night stand in A Thin Line Between Love & Hate (which he also co-wrote and directed) is now matching wits with a walking slab of bacon and breaking into song alongside a performer so whitebread, he makes Pat Boone seem edgy.

Truth be told, Lawrence has been paving the way for this transformation for some time now. Beginning with the 2005 basketball comedy Rebound, he's followed his idol and one-time co-star Eddie Murphy's journey from edgy comic to non-threatening family man. But even Murphy hasn't ventured where Lawrence goes in College Road Trip: the realm of the live-action, G-rated Disney comedy.

Not to be mistaken for a sequel to the ribald 2000 teenspolitation flick Road Trip, College Road Trip casts Lawrence as James Porter, a small-town police chief and absurdly overprotective father of college-age daughter Melanie (Raven-Symoné, a mini-mogul on the level of Miley Cyrus and the Olsen twins), who is getting ready to leave the nest and go off to university. Always the prepared parent, James has already picked out the perfect school for her: Northwestern University, located on a beautiful campus that's a convenient half-hour drive from home. Melanie has her own plans, though, which involve studying pre-law at Washington, D.C.'s storied Georgetown University, as well as spending a semester abroad in Japan.

When the opportunity to interview at her first-choice school opens up, Melanie convinces her parents to let her take a road trip to D.C. with her best friends. But James isn't able to let go of her that easily; retrofitting his cop cruiser as a "college road trip" party vehicle (complete with a daddy/daughter mix tape and a sackful of snacks), he informs a horrified Melanie that he'll be personally escorting her to Georgetown.

Naturally, things go badly from the start. First, James tricks Melanie into taking a side trip to Northwestern, where they make the acquaintance of show-tune singing dad Doug Greenhut (Osmond) and his bubbly daughter Wendy (Molly Ephraim). Then, while trying to make up lost time with an off-road detour, their car is totaled, forcing them to make their way to D.C. by any mode of transport available, including a Japanese tour bus, a skydiving plane and, finally, a golf cart.

Had College Road Trip been made during Disney's previous live-action heyday in the ’60s, it probably would have starred Fred MacMurray as James, Hayley Mills as Melanie and a 10-year-old Kurt Russell as Trey, the youngest Porter child who stows away in his dad's car. It's a measure of how far we've come that an all-black ensemble can be cast in the same roles without race ever being an issue, either in the world of the film or the make-up of the audience that will turn out to see it this weekend. The four-person team of screenwriters hew closely to the formula established by vintage Disney comedies like The Shaggy Dog and Follow Me Boys!, alternating pratfall-heavy "Oh dad!" jokes with moments of excessive but occasionally effective sentimentality.

The main difference between those films and this one lies in its volume and pace. Raised on a steady diet of ear-shattering tween-pop music-videos and hyper-caffeinated commercials (which, ironically enough, are steadily fed to them via Disney's cable network), today's young viewers might have a hard time sitting still through one of those MacMurray museum pieces. Director Roger Kumble indulges their ADD-affected viewing habits, smash-cutting from scene to scene and even speeding up the action Benny Hill-style during certain sequences. He also apparently instructed the actors to SHOUT rather than speak their dialogue, as if they're performing summer stock in a cavernous auditorium.

What often gets lost amidst all the noise is the film's emotional center. Lawrence and his onscreen daughter have a few nice (and quiet) moments together—most notably a climactic "Sunrise, Sunset"-style montage that brought a lump to the throat of this new father—but the movie doesn't give them a chance to flesh out their respective personalities. They may end their college road trip on better terms, but for the audience they remain strangers.

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