HollywoodIdiocy.com

Given its G rating, I wasn’t sure what to expect from Disney’s College Road Trip, but I was relatively confident that, at the very least, there’d be nothing offensive language-wise. On that count, I was correct and so the Martin Lawrence-Raven Symone father-daughter comedy was a welcome respite from the “unrated edition” stuff I usually wade through.

Despite being a Disney comedy, the film is not without some quirkiness; the most notable example is Lawrence’s obsession in the first half of the film with his son’s pet pig, which he claims is “eyeballing me.” The subplot shows promise for some genuine weirdness that I won’t spoil in the scope of this review, but then is dropped completely from the second half of the film with no real payoff on the idea.

Of course, the focus of the film is the father-daughter relationship, not the father-pig relationship; and despite the film being littered with promotional products and embedded advertising, the movie is enjoyable – if you’re a member of the younger set.

While a great “whole family” film, the comedy is a bit over the top for older audiences, and even the teen crowd that Symone’s character is part of would have a hard time swallowing the schmaltzy story being told. Still, better a bunch of sloppy sentiments about kids growing up and away from their parents than, saw, delving into the repetitive world of the Saw movie franchise, right? A person can only tolerate so much of that.

The conflict is a rather simple one; dad wants daughter to go to a college close to home and daughter, naturally, wants to go to a “much better school” halfway across the country. The action is livened up by a rare appearance by Donny Osmund, of all people, who submits an enjoyable performance as a Ned Flanders type.

By featuring Symone, who is anything but the typical emaciated Hollywood starlet that Miley Cyrus represents, the film offers an appealing protagonist who won’t make young kids feel quite so inadequate. Still, the bottom line here is that the film is funny in places, but probably in a way that will embarrass older kids, while younger kids will enjoy it quite a bit. As for the adults, well … anything’s better than the 500th viewing of The Parent Trap, right? Either version.

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