With spring break just around the corner many people may realize they don’t have the funds and/or the desire to travel. So if you’re looking to live vicariously through others from the comfort and safety of your own home here are some road trip/traveling movie suggestions to keep you entertained.
Eurotrip (2004) – If you’re in the mood for a raunchy good time, this teen sex comedy is sure to tickle your fancy.
After being horribly dumped and humiliated, Scott (Scott Mechlowicz) and his best friend Cooper (Jacob Pitts) travel to Europe to meet Scott’s German pen pal. They meet up with their friends, the twins Jenny (Michelle Trachtenberg) and Jamie (Travis Wester), and have an outrageous trip across Europe that includes nude beaches, nightclubs and hardcore soccer fans. The unrated version of this film is funny, crass and the DVD offers an option to skip to all the nude scenes. This is the perfect spring break getaway without having to worry about ending up with herpes or on a Girls Gone Wild video.
Fanboys (2008) – If raunchy isn’t your style and you’re more into a geeky good time, then this Star Wars-inspired film is the one for you.
Star Wars fans will rejoice in this clever film about four friends making their way across the country to try and break into Lucas Ranch and steal a copy of the yet-to-be-released Phantom Menace. Eric (Sam Huntington) and Linus (Chris Marquette) used to be best friends but have grown apart. When Eric finds out that Linus is ill, he comes up with a plan to help his friend see, the much anticipated, Episode I that he may not live to see. So the boys jump into their friend’s pimped out Star Wars-themed van and head for Skywalker Ranch. Along the way they teach some trekkies a lesson, hang out at a gay biker bar, smoke peyote (some Ewok action here), and end up in Vegas running from a pimp before they arrive at the ranch. This movie is great if you’re a Star Wars fan (not so much if you’re a trekkie), and it does have some awesome cameos by several Star Wars veterans as well as a Kevin Smith, Jason Mewes and William Shatner.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) – While this may be more of a holiday movie it is still a classic road trip film that encompasses all the hazards of traveling.
John Hughes’s laugh out loud misadventure takes viewers on a disastrous ride with strangers Neal Page (Steve Martin) and Del Griffith (John Candy) as they try to make their way home for Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, fate has other plans in store for Neal, mainly the unlikely acquaintance with Del, a large, loud and at times annoying shower curtain sales man. These men keep running into each other, and after their flight has to land elsewhere due to foul weather, these men team up for a hilarious, thank-god-its-not-happening-to-me trip home. From sharing a bed to their car catching on fire, if it can go wrong for Neal it does. But along the way an unlikely bond is formed, and isn’t the true value to any road trip the company you keep?
It Happened One Night (1934)– No road trip list would be complete without Frank Capra’s romantic screwball comedy classic. This goes to show that road trip movies have been around since the beginning of cinema.
Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) is on the run from her overbearing father and trying to get back to her new husband whom she had just eloped with when her father finds her and snatches her away. On her travels she teams up with Peter Warne (Clark Gable) who is a journalist with only one shot at keeping his job, getting the exclusive story of Ellie’s flight to freedom. Ellie, a pampered socialite, has no idea what hazards can befall a woman traveling alone and Peter steps in as her guide and protector. Neither expects the attraction that blossoms along the way. The walls of Jericho were never depicted better than they are in this film.
