--- title: "Road Trip" year: 2000 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/road-trip" fi1m_score: 64 critics_score: 64 critics_reviews: 9 published: "2026-09-20T09:49:52.412424+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T09:49:52.867218+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Road Trip (2000) Directed by Todd Phillips · 1h 33m · MPA R · Comedy, Adventure **Fi1m score: 64** · Critics 64 from 9 reviews *In a sentence:* A film about a videotape in the post, narrated by a man feeding a mouse to a snake > Todd Phillips’s first comedy is slack, crude and funnier than it has any right to be, and DJ Qualls gives it the one person we cared about. Watch it with company; alone, it is somebody else’s stag do. ## Synopsis Josh (Breckin Meyer) is a student at Ithaca College in upstate New York, still going out with Tiffany (Rachel Blanchard), the girl he has loved since childhood, now at university in Austin, Texas. When she stops returning his calls he falls into bed with Beth (Amy Smart), and the night is caught on video. The tape is posted to Tiffany by mistake. Josh has to beat the post to Texas, so he sets off in a borrowed car with E.L. (Seann William Scott), who likes trouble, Rubin (Paulo Costanzo), who likes weed, and Kyle (DJ Qualls), a nervous stranger whose father owns the car. Barry (Tom Green), left behind to feed Rubin’s snake, tells the whole story to a tour party of prospective students. ## Review *Road Trip* is Todd Phillips’s first go at the kind of comedy he would later make his living from. Four students drive from New York State to Texas to intercept a videotape, and the film stops at every station on the gross-out line: the motel, the diner, the fraternity house, the sperm bank. It is slack, crude and, in stretches, properly funny, and it is kinder to its idiots than the genre usually manages. It runs 93 minutes, carries a 15, and reached British cinemas on 13 October 2000. Phillips and his co-writer Scot Armstrong hang the whole thing on Tom Green. Green plays Barry, a student of no fixed year who takes a party of prospective students round the campus and tells them this story instead of the history, breaking off to feed a live mouse to Rubin’s snake. Green’s act, the slow blink, the flat stare, the refusal to stop a bit when it has stopped being comfortable, divides people cleanly. We found him funny about two times in three, and relieved each time the film cut away from him. The boys in the car are sorted by type. Breckin Meyer’s Josh is the straight man, a decent boy who has done a stupid thing, and Meyer plays him without vanity. Seann William Scott, a year on from *American Pie*, gives E.L. the same grin and a nastier appetite; he is the one who always says yes. Paulo Costanzo’s Rubin knows a great deal and smokes through most of it. And DJ Qualls’s Kyle, all elbows and Adam’s apple, a stranger who came along only because the car is his father’s, is the best thing in the film by a distance. Qualls plays a boy who has never once been invited anywhere, and the film’s one true feeling is watching him work out that he might be enjoying himself. We laughed at Kyle more than at anyone, and we were on his side the whole way. Fred Ward turns up as Earl Edwards, Kyle’s father, following the wreckage of his car across the country with a face like a slammed door, and he gets more out of a look than the script gets from most of its lines. Anthony Rapp’s Jacob, the campus oddball, is a joke that lands once and is then told for eighty minutes. Amy Smart gives Beth a warmth nobody wrote down. Rachel Blanchard’s Tiffany is a destination rather than a person, and the film half admits it. Mark Irwin lights it flat and bright, so that every joke is in plain view, which is the correct way to photograph a man about to do something to a plate of French toast. Clark Hunter dresses the road as a run of rooms that are each slightly wrong: a motel with a bed too few, a diner whose cook should not be handling food, a sperm bank waiting room with too many magazines. Sheldon Kahn and Peter Teschner cut the set pieces tight and the stretches between them loose, so the film moves in lurches; for a comedy this short it has a surprising amount of dead road. Michael Simpson’s score keeps out of the way and lets the songs do the driving. Two of the set pieces are good. The French toast sequence, in which Horatio Sanz’s cook is asked to remake an order and does, is the film’s most disgusting idea and its best made one, built from cutaways and reaction shots and a pause held one beat longer than we could stand. We laughed out loud and then felt faintly grubby, which is exactly what Phillips wants. The other, involving a broken bridge, the borrowed car and Kyle’s faith in physics, is over in a minute. The rest is mid-table: things happen in motel rooms and somebody is usually undressed. Next to *Animal House* it is mild, and next to *American Pie* it is cruder, shorter and has less on its mind. Phillips would take the same shape, a few men, a lost object and a deadline, and tighten it into [*The Hangover*](https://film.one/film/the-hangover) nine years later. With company, a drink and low expectations it does its job. Alone and sober, it is a set of sketches with a car in it, and you will notice the car. *Fi1m score 64, published 20 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics come away amused and not much more, which for a gross-out comedy is roughly the point. The reviews lean positive by two to one, and the praise clusters on the same things: the raunch is delivered with confidence, the pace is brisk, and the whole thing sits comfortably in the Animal House and American Pie line without embarrassing itself. Tom Green’s offbeat narration and DJ Qualls are the performers most often singled out, and Variety credits director Phillips with balancing beery chaos against some sly calculation about what will land. The reservations are about structure rather than taste. Several reviews call the plot thin or contrived and the film formulaic, a string of set pieces on wheels. Sight and Sound wants sharper punchlines, RogerEbert.com finds the mix of sweetness and raunch uneasy, and The AV Club thinks the jokes simply do not land. The spread is moderate: nobody raves and nobody despises it. ### Reviews we read (9) - **Empire**, Clark Collis (80/100, inferred): The critic finds the film plotless and tasteless but wickedly funny, better than American Pie thanks to knowing digs at 1980s movies. It earns a place in the same ballpark as Animal House, with a subtext about living life to the fullest. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/road-trip-review/) - **Variety**, Joe Leydon (80/100, inferred): Leydon notes that the gross-out humor is even grosser than American Pie, praising how director Phillips strikes the right balance of beery anarchy and sly calculation. [Read](https://variety.com/2000/film/reviews/road-trip-1200462249/) - **Los Angeles Times**, Kevin Thomas (75/100, inferred): Thomas calls it an uproarious college comedy that continues the rowdy Animal House tradition, consistently funny with over-the-top humor and a clear-eyed lack of sentimentality. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-may-19-ca-31587-story.html) - **The New York Times**, Stephen Holden (70/100, inferred): Holden highlights the raunchy gross-out humor, singling out the notorious French toast sequence as part of a hit in the post-teen genre with clever mad scientists of dumb cinematic raunch. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/19/movies/film-review-restaurant-protocol-and-other-helpful-tips.html) - **Time Out**, TJ (70/100, inferred): The review describes the road trip antics as echoing the Farrelly brothers while noting more to offer than just highlights, singling out Tom Green's offbeat narration and especially DJ Qualls' performance for praise amid the good-natured humor. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/road-trip) - **Total Film** (70/100, inferred): Gross-out comedy feels dated and forced to some, but the film is better than most teen movies thanks to crisp dialogue, good pace, and Tom Green as the standout performer. It is entertaining and worth watching despite not being a classic. [Read](https://www.gamesradar.com/road-trip-review/) - **Sight and Sound**, Keith Perry (50/100, inferred): The critic views it as a standard youth comedy on wheels with a series of set pieces, finding much of the visual comedy amusing but faulting the script for lacking sharper punchlines and the film overall for not pushing boundaries enough. [Read](http://old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/review/484) - **RogerEbert.com**, Roger Ebert (40/100, inferred): Ebert finds the film uneasy with its mix of sweetness and raunch, criticizing the contrived plot and obligatory nudity while noting some likable characters and laughs. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/road-trip-2000) - **The AV Club**, Keith Phipps (40/100, inferred): The film aims low and hits its mark as a formulaic teen sex comedy in the vein of American Pie, succeeding at being broad and mercenary but failing to make its jokes land effectively. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/road-trip-1798192383) ## Details - **Director:** Todd Phillips - **Director:** Todd Phillips - **Writer:** Todd Phillips, Scot Armstrong - **Cinematography:** Mark Irwin - **Editor:** Peter Teschner, Sheldon Kahn - **Music:** Michael Simpson - **Production design:** Clark Hunter - **Producer:** Daniel Goldberg, Joe Medjuck - **Cast:** Breckin Meyer as Josh; Seann William Scott as E.L.; Amy Smart as Beth; Paulo Costanzo as Rubin; DJ Qualls as Kyle; Rachel Blanchard as Tiffany; Anthony Rapp as Jacob; Fred Ward as Earl Edwards - **Runtime:** 1h 33m - **Certificate (MPA):** R - **Release (the US):** 19 May 2000 - **Genres:** Comedy, Adventure - **Budget:** $16 million - **Box office:** $120 million ## Where to watch in the US - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd, leaving 2026-10-01 - Hulu: add-on, hd, leaving 2026-10-01 - Amazon Prime Video: add-on, uhd - Apple TV: add-on, uhd - Apple TV: rent $3.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd - Apple TV: buy $14.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $14.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: AE, AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, HK, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IT, JP, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, TH, UA, US, ZA. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *National Lampoon's Animal House* (1978): The campus comedy this one keeps glancing at, ruder and better organised. - *Planes, Trains and Automobiles* (1987): Two men, one journey, every mode of transport failing; the road comedy with a heart. - *Y Tu Mamá También* (2001), Fi1m 87: Two Mexican teenagers, a borrowed car and an older woman; sex, jokes and then something more. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/y-tu-mama-tambien.md) - *Old School* (2003), Fi1m 60: Phillips again, with grown men behaving worse and Will Ferrell at full stretch. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/old-school.md) - *The Inbetweeners Movie* (2011): The British version of the lads’ trip: smaller, sadder, and considerably funnier about failure. --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/road-trip