french toast scene road trip

Gross, Point Blank: 10 Most Disgusting Eating Scenes From Movies

From incredible to inedible, TIME presents a 10-course menu of filmdom’s most gut-churning eating scenes

THE DINER: Kyle Edwards (DJ Qualls), the high-strung member of the movie’s road-tripping crew

THE SETTING: After ordering a morning meal at a strip-mall eatery, Kyle expresses dismay at seeing his breakfast covered in powdered sugar. The group’s burly server (Horatio Sanz) takes back the order with a smile.

THE MEAL: Two pieces of French toast, licked by Sanz and given a brief tour of his crotch

NAUSEA LEVEL (ON A SCALE OF 1 to 10): [ 7 ] It’s the little details that make this scene: Sanz’s tongue penetrating the bread or the faint outline of the slice in his sweatpants. Genius!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVLe_QJ0xf8]

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Neil Young’s Film Lounge – Road Trip

US 2000 dir. Todd Phillips scr. Phillips, Scot Armstrong cin. Mark Irwin stars Breckin Meyer, Seann William Scott, Tom Green, D.J. Qualls 91 minutes

Road Trip is a comedy, and I laughed. Not all the way through, and never to gut-busting proportions, but enough. This is a breezily, unpretentious, genially upbeat movie, with a few little unexpected touches and delights along the way. These are welcome, but they also suggest that, with perhaps just one more rewrite of the script, and just a little bit of a wilder approach by the director, Road Trip could well have added up to a whole lot more.

Director Phillips was responsible for the well-received Frat House documentary, and his first fictional film is a compendium of numerous campus urban myths, built around the central tale of a student who inadvertently sends his longtime girlfriend a videotape of himself having sex with another girl, and who must then set off in hot pursuit before the package arrives: the whole film is, in fact, structured as a (tall) tale, told to prospective University of Ithaca students by tour guide alumnus Barry (Green), to whom we keep returning as the action unfolds. The central characters are familiar enough college-movie types: there’s the Jock (Meyer as Josh, the errant boyfriend), the Brain (Paulo Costanzo as Rubin), the Stud (Scott as E.L.) and the Geek (Qualls as Kyle). Meyer is lumbered with carrying the plot, and initially his main function is as straight man to wisecracking Scott – but as the film progresses our focus shifts again, this time onto Qualls, who only gets to go on the road trip because it’s his car the lads decide to ride in.

While Scott gets most of the script’s funny lines, he share the laughs with thoroughly spaced-out Scott, who features in many of the visual set-pieces around which Phillips builds his film: just as in American Pie there was the ‘pie scene’ and the ‘flute scene’, and in There’s Something About Mary we had the ‘dog scene’ and the ‘zip scene,’ Road Trip serves up the ‘snake scene’ and the ‘French Toast scene,’ not to mention the ‘milking scene’ and the ‘boner scene,’ and the less you know about these in advance, the better. But while these are funny and satisfyingly ‘gross,’ they aren’t anything new or groundbreaking. The toast scene, for example, is just a variation on a trick Kevin Smith included in his underrated Mallrats (Ethan Suplee appears in both films) and that came out years ago.

There are only a couple of moments when Phillips briefly breaks through to another level. There’s a car leap across a stream that’s as breathtaking as anything in Gone In Sixty Seconds , but which has a ‘real world’ payoff that’s arguably the funniest and most unexpected bit in the whole movie. The second ‘breakthrough’ moment is to do with the film’s narrative design: as Green recounts one particular episode featuring Josh’s girlfriend at college in Austin, we see her in the girl’s changing rooms, surrounded by her friends – most of whom are topless, and notably well-endowed. One of Green’s audience breaks into the story to query whether girls really do go around semi-undressed in such situations, and the narrator huffily responds to the effect that this is his story, and he’ll tell it how he likes. This casts the whole of the rest of the film in an intriguing new light – preposterous developments and exaggerations are thus laid at Barry’s door, not the writer-director’s – but Todd Phillips frustratingly doesn’t develop it any further.

In a similar vein, there are many loose ends that just never go anywhere. Much is made of the fact that E.L. ‘borrows’ a blind-school bus, but there’s no payoff. The film’ odd structure switches distractingly between Josh and the boys on the road (to whom rather less happens than you’d expect), Barry in Ithaca, Tiffany in Austin, and Josh’s new squeeze Beth who, due to a plot contrivance, follows his trail to Boston, then Austin. Most damaging of all, Road Trip really loses its way in its final fifteen minutes when it should instead be coming together with a mighty bang. Kyle is the only character given much of a back story – he’s been browbeaten by his father all his life, and, emboldened by his adventures on the road, finally has the nerve to face up to Dad (Fred Ward). But Phillips muffs this crucial confrontation by having it happen among the chaos resulting from Josh’s interception of the video tape at Austin University. At which point the movie skitters and skids to an abrupt halt, with Barry providing a what-happened-next summary for each of the main characters.

It’s all wrapped up a bit too neat – rather like Phillips’s whole approach. If ever a movie genre cried out for rough treatment, it’s the campus comedy. But instead Road Trip has a commercial smoothness to its visuals, a blanded-out glossiness that runs in direct contrast to the unpredictable antics on screen – even Kevin Smith’s two-dimensional “no-look” look would have been more suitable. I just wish he’d had the nerve to follow Kyle’s example, and really let himself go. Then again, Phillips’ approach paid big dividends at the US box office, where the film was a surprise summer smash – and I suppose any critic’s comments on this kind of film are hot air, anyway.

by Neil Young

Buckle Up and Check Out the Cast of Road Trip Then and Now

It's been 20 years since four college kids piled into the car and embarked on a tour of debauchery for a ridiculous cause in todd phillips' feature directorial debut.

How do we top Jason Biggs doing it with a pie...?

Such was surely the question on countless filmmakers' lips after the box office success of American Pie , which spurred the urge to fill theaters with debauched hi-jinks that young gentlemen especially would find funny.

Todd Phillips perfected that formula over the course of the 00s, and he started with 2000's Road Trip , a raunchy gross-out fest cranked up to 11 about a fairly normal college student played by Breckin Meyer who hits the road to intercept a sex tape of him and a one-night stand that was accidentally mailed to his girlfriend, played by Rachel Blanchard , who's at another school. And of course he wouldn't embark on such an important mission alone...

Sex is had between expected and unexpected partners, a prostate is probed, French toast gets a dusting of flop sweat, a mouse is molested by Tom Green . Phillips, who also wrote the story with Scot Armstrong , packed it all in, and even borrowed Stifler from what would soon be a whole American Pie franchise for the ride.

"I find the term 'gross-out comedy' sort of dismissive," Phillips, ready to go to bat for whatever he was working on since the beginning, told the BBC in 2000. "It's very easy to be gross, it's very hard to be funny. I think why Road Trip works is not because of the gross stuff, it's because of the characters."

And since 20 years is a bit of time, definitely enough time for a few twists and turns on everybody's journey, let's get a load of what these miscreants all looked like then vs. now:

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Unexpectedly Gross Scenes That Make Us Jump For The Fast-Forward Button

Everyone has those scenes that you always skip in movies you otherwise completely love. Just like skipping past the bummer track on an otherwise upbeat album, there are some movies that just seem to cross their own lines in a way that's more unpleasant for the audience than amusing . Sure, maybe the shock was fun the first time, but upon the second or third viewing, you're gonna be a lot happier just hitting that fast-forward button.

Gross movie scenes simply aren't everyone's cup of tea. In the same way that some people don't enjoy horror flicks, some people don't like watching a character projectile vomit in another person's face. Maybe that's a wild concept to some readers out there, but if anyone didn't know, vomit isn't the most pleasant thing to look at. But, to be fair, some of these movie scenes make audiences wish vomit was all they had to look at.

The Eclair Prank In 'National Lampoon's Van Wilder'

Before Ryan Reynolds began grossing out audiences as Deadpool, he was grossing out audiences as Van Wilder. One scene in particular rivals the raunchiness of anything the Merc with the Mouth has ever said. After a series of escalating pranks, Van Wilder (both the character and the movie) takes things way too far. To end the prank war, Van Wilder and his friends deliver a basket of eclairs to the fraternity guys they're fighting with. Except, these aren't ordinary eclairs. These are eclairs that have an extra ingredient added especially for the boys. While Van and his friends were making eclairs, they had a dog inseminate them .

Van Wilder isn't content with only himself knowing about the prank, though. So, at the bottom of the basket, he leaves pictures of the dog doing the deed with the eclairs. So, once the boys' bellies are full, they see the pictures and begin to projectile vomit.

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The Worst Toilet In Scotland Scene In 'Trainspotting'

In an early scene in Trainspotting that's so bad, any viewer that sat through the rest of the movie should be commended, Ewan McGregor's character, Mark, desperately needs to use the restroom after his heroin-induced constipation begins to wear off. Because the situation is so dire, Mark is forced to use what the film refers to as the "worst toilet in all of Scotland." The bathroom instantly earns this moniker, as it's literally covered from floor to ceiling in slime . It's no problem for Mark, though, who begins to use the toilet and treats the audience to a medley of disgusting sounds.

The scene doesn't stop there. There's a problem after Mark wraps up his toilet time. Before his constipation had worn off, Mark had just inserted a suppository. Now, he's ready to get that back. The problem is it's now down in the depths of the dirty toilet water. So, Mark reaches in and eventually falls completely into the murky water below.

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The Toilet Scene In 'Slumdog Millionaire'

In Slumdog Millionaire , a gameshow contestant, Jamal, has to prove during police questioning how he got all of the answers correct on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire . Each of these questions prompts a flashback into the boy's life. While most of the flashbacks aren't particularly pleasant, one, in particular, stands out as being outright disgusting.

In the scene, Jamal is much younger and attempting to use the bathroom in an outhouse . While Jamal is in there, a commotion starts outside as Jamal's favorite actor lands his helicopter in a nearby field. Jamal is desperate to get out of the outhouse, but his friend locks him in to get revenge on Jamal for previously losing him a customer. With the door locked, Jamal leaves the outhouse with the only remaining option - dropping down through the hole in the bottom and into the literal pool of crap below. By the time Jamal makes it over to the actor, he's covered head-to-toe in feces.

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The Coffee Scene In 'Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me'

In The Spy Who Shagged Me , Austin Powers finds himself inside a laboratory and completely out of his element. While trying to pour himself a cup of coffee, he accidentally pours himself a steaming cup of Fat Bastard's stool samples . The scene then plays a little game with the viewers as Austin continues to raise the cup to his lips but is distracted and stops before sipping.

It's not until Austin announces that the coffee smells like feces, and all the other characters realize what he's about to do, that Austin actually drinks the stool sample. Then, Austin stands there in the room with a literal sh*t-eating grin as the brown liquid forms around his mouth.

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The Projectile Vomit Scene In 'Pitch Perfect'

Pitch Perfect is, at times, shockingly gross for a film about an a cappella group. Pitch Perfect , released a year after Bridesmaids , follows proudly in the footsteps of its predecessor as being an all-girls movie that's absolutely not afraid to go there ("there," in this case, being shockingly low-brow, gross-out jokes).

In one of the most disgusting scenes in the film, the co-leader of the troupe, Aubrey, projectile vomits towards her teammates after being told to loosen up. The vomiting is gross enough as it is, but then one of the girls ups the ante by laying down in the puke and making a snow angel .

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The French Toast Scene In 'Road Trip'

In Road Trip , a man races across the country to retrieve the tape he recorded with another woman that he mistakenly mailed to his girlfriend. That's only one of many mistakes made in the film, though, one of which being the classic mistake of sending one's food back at a restaurant.

During breakfast, one of the men along for the road trip sends his french toast back to have the excess powdered sugar removed. The seemingly pleasant waiter obliges immediately, but in the back, he licks the french toast and then puts one slice in the front of his pants and the other in the back. He then leaves the toast in his pants for a bit as he does his rounds, disgustingly farting on the toast as he does so. Then, he serves it to the friend, who eats it and comments on how good it is. The friend never knows any better, and the audience can never forget.

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The Pie-Eating Contest In 'Stand by Me'

In Stand by Me , four boys head out into the wilderness to find a rumored missing body. It's a heartwarming and comedic coming-of-age movie, but it includes one scene that's a different tone from the rest. While the boys are camping, to pass the time, the one who will one day grow up and become a writer tells the story of a mocked, overweight boy dubbed "lard *ss" who competes in a pie-eating contest. But, the boy rigs the contest so that he projectile vomits onto his fellow contestant in the middle of it, spewing puke into the man's open mouth .

This causes all of the other contestants to vomit, and before long, everyone in the crowd is throwing up left and right. The scene is particularly gruesome due to the sheer length of it, as once the barfs start coming, it doesn't stop.

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The Mr. Creosote Scene In 'Monty Python's The Meaning of Life'

The most memorable sketch (for all the wrong reasons) in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life is certainly the Mr. Creosote scene . In the sketch, an impossibly large man enters a fine dining restaurant and is waited on by an equally as impossibly patient waiter. Creosote is given a bucket to catch his constant projectile vomiting, but most of the vomit still seems to find its way onto his clothes.

Creosote orders a massive dinner and scarfs it all down, but things go south when he's given his after-dinner mint. The mint proves to be the straw that broke the camel's back because upon consuming it, Creosote literally bursts, and his guts explode out into the room.

The Toilet Ceiling Collapse In 'Not Another Teen Movie'

In Not Another Teen Movie , a group of peeping toms attempts to get a peek into the girl's bathroom. But, instead of seeing something tantalizing, they end up realizing that bathrooms just aren't sexy, no matter the gender.

As the boys stare down at a girl using the toilet, they hear a lot more disgusting noises than they see anything attractive. Intercut with a teacher explaining the true comedy of a subtle line in Shakespeare is the extreme amount of gas the girl is passing into the toilet. To top off the scene, the boys fall from the vent, crash into the girl below, and then they all (toilet included) crash through that floor resulting in a metric ton of feces splashing into the classroom below .

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The Food Poisoning Dress Fitting In 'Bridesmaids'

Bridesmaids is a massively popular film that found success both commercially and with critics. As one of the beloved Kristen Wiig's best films, it's a comfort watch for many, filled with the laugh-out-loud moments one has come to expect from an Apatow film. "Apatow" being the keyword here because while this film may be written off by some as a chick flick, as Roger Ebert put it , it's actually a "deliberate attempt to cross the Chick Flick with the Raunch Comedy. It definitely proves that women are the equal of men in vulgarity, sexual frankness, lust, vulnerability, overdrinking, and insecurity."

No moment in Bridesmaids brings the gross-out raunchy humor of an Apatow film quite like the infamous dressing room scene. While out looking for their dresses, all of the bridesmaids start to get the rumblies at once due to a touch of food poisoning from their dinner before. Before long, it starts coming out of both ends for the bridesmaids as they all scramble to find a place to relieve themselves. One of them throws up in the toilet while Melissa McCarthy defecates in the sink, and Maya Rudolph is left relieving herself in the literal street.

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The Brain Implant Removal In 'Total Recall'

After discovering that his entire life is fake and the result of false implanted memories, Douglas Quaid goes on the run. He discovers that his past self has left himself a care package containing instructions on what to do next. Among the necessary tasks he must complete is removing a tracking device in his skull. To do so, Quaid has to insert a rather unfriendly looking device up into his nose that grabs the tracker and yanks it out.

Quaid's face contorts in pain as he pulls the impossibly large object through his nasal canal, really stretching out his nose in the process.

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The Bug Implant In 'The Matrix'

The Matrix isn't a particularly gross film, which makes the arrival of this scene all the more shocking. In an early scene in the film, Neo is captured and interrogated by Agent Smith. Neo requests his one phone call, to which Agent Smith replies, "What good is a phone call if you can't speak?" That's when the scene gets really disgusting and dives into body horror as Neo's mouth begins to melt together , forming a patch of skin where the opening used to be.

It's the type of scene that makes an audience viscerally feel Neo's panic at the sheer horror of such a thing ever happening to oneself. The scene only gets worse from there, as Smith unleashes some sort of bug-probe onto Neo that burrows down into his belly button.

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The Laxative Scene In 'Dumb and Dumber'

In Dumb and Dumber , Harry and Lloyd begin fighting over a girl named Mary. As tensions rise and Harry lies to Lloyd, Lloyd gets back at his friend by putting a laxative in his coffee. This leads to Harry desperately needing to excuse himself while at Mary's house as he relentlessly relieves himself in her toilet (the sounds are not fun to listen to).

After he goes, Harry receives the worst possible news for a man in his position. Mary calls into the bathroom to inform him that she hopes he isn't using the toilet because it doesn't flush. Harry tries his best to fix it, but the scene ends with him dumping his fecal matter from the toilet out the window.

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The Hair Gel Scene In 'There's Something About Mary'

Before going out with his dream girl, Mary, Ted decides to relieve himself (to put it mildly) in the bathroom. There's a slight problem, though, because after he's done, he isn't able to find the mess he made. So, Ted leaves to meet Mary at the door when she notices said mess clinging to his ear.

Luckily, she thinks the sticky, clear substance is hair gel, but unluckily, she grabs the gel and puts it into her own hair. The scene then cuts to the bar, where the definitely-not-hair-gel has made her hair stick straight up into the air.

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Lists of great, unforgettable, and weird scenes in film and TV - and how they got made.

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Anal probe jokes. Sperm bank jokes. Jokes about toe sucking, Viagra-fueled erections, eating live mice and doing unspeakably vulgar things to French toast. No doubt about it: When it comes to gross-out humor, “Road Trip” is even grosser than last year’s “American Pie.” It’s hardly likely to gross more than its notorious predecessor, but this first feature by award-winning documentarian Todd Phillips (“Frat House”) aims low and scores big often.

By Joe Leydon

Film Critic

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Much more exuberantly funny than its generic title might indicate, “Road Trip” focuses on the rude, crude and occasionally lewd behavior of four college pals on a cross-country misadventure.

Popular on Variety

At New York’s Ithaca College, chronic underachiever Josh (Breckin Meyer, looking very much like a trash-compacted Bill Maher) makes a big mistake when he assumes his suddenly incommunicado girlfriend, Tiffany (Rachel Blanchard), must be misbehaving while attending college in far-off Austin, Texas.

Deeply wounded — and yet, perhaps, just a little relieved — Josh compounds his error by giving in to temptation. Well, actually, he doesn’t just give in — he lies down and allows himself to be mounted — but never mind: He has a terrific night of whoopee with the beautiful Beth (Amy Smart), who has long lusted for Josh, and who impulsively records the evening’s festivities on videotape.

The next morning, Josh discovers that Tiffany wasn’t returning his calls only because she was coping with a family tragedy. Trouble is, Josh also discovers that another tragedy may be in the offing: One of his roomies has accidentally mailed the Beth-does-Josh video to Tiffany.

Frantic to retrieve the tape before Tiffany receives it, Josh sets out for Austin, accompanied by three friends: E.L. (Seann William Scott of “American Pie”), a wild-eyed party animal; Rubin (Paulo Costanzo), a cerebral stoner; and Kyle (D.J. Qualls), a reedy geek who lives in constant dread of displeasing his overprotective father (Fred Ward).

Under normal circumstances, Kyle wouldn’t dream of going on a road trip with the other fellows — and, truth to tell, the other fellows wouldn’t dream of asking him. But since Josh borrows Kyle’s car for the journey, Kyle kinda-sorta feels compelled to go along for the ride.

Additional complications arise when Beth — who’s understandably miffed about being treated as a one-night stand, especially since she genuinely believed Josh and Tiffany had broken up — hits the road on her own. She’s determined to break the bad news to Tiffany in person. Unfortunately, Beth is misdirected by Barry (MTV’s Tom Green), Josh’s mondo-bizarro buddy, who sends her to Boston instead of Austin.

Even more unfortunately, Tiffany says the wrong thing to the wrong girlfriend, who proceeds to wreak havoc on a totally innocent boyfriend.

Meanwhile, back on the road and racing against time, the four travelers wreck their car, lose most of their money and nearly cause an unpleasant incident at an African-American college frat house. Desperation leads to improvisation: The guys steal a bus from a school for the blind, earn some quick money as sperm donors and fortuitously find a way for Kyle to lose his virginity. Not even the inconvenient appearance of Kyle’s hot-headed father can spoil the fun.

Working from a loosely knit picaresque screenplay he co-wrote with Scot Armstrong, director Phillips strikes the right balance of beery anarchy and sly calculation in constructing an anything-goes comedy that isn’t nearly as politically incorrect as it seems at first glance.

The filmmakers want to have their “American Pie” and eat it, too, so they nimbly avoid stereotyping while rolling out the raunch. At the African-American frat house, for example, the four white leads, not their bemused black hosts, serve as the butts of broad jokes. And the female characters, even the less-than-virginal ones, are what feminists might describe as “empowered,” in that they always are the ones to decide who gets to do what, when and how during close contacts.

E.L. is a hormonally inflamed sexist who prods Josh toward extracurricular activities — “Before you know it, you’ll be 40, and you’ll have to pay for these kinds of girls!” — but this tiger is easily tamed by a domineering nurse who knows just where to place a gloved and lubricated finger. (This cues the pic’s funniest, most likely to be quoted line: “That was … awesome.”) Tiffany turns out to be slightly more experienced than Josh assumed — but “Road Trip” is too honest, or at least too frankly raunchy, to hold this against her.

Indeed, the filmmakers are quite generous in rewarding anyone with a healthy sex drive, even when the reward calls for upending audience expectations regarding how this kind of comedy usually resolves itself. In the world according to “Road Trip,” even a conventionally “bad” girl can get what she really wants, and a wacko like Barry can get what he needs before he knows he wants it.

The attractive and engaging young leads are game for just about anything, and their enthusiasm is highly contagious. In his bigscreen debut, Tom Green comes off as a younger, marginally hipper version of Bill Murray’s wacky groundskeeper in “Caddyshack.” But the most memorable scene-stealer among the supporting players is Edmund Lyndeck, cast as a pot-smoking, Viagra-munching senior citizen who hears the darnedest things when he’s stoned.

The eclectic soundtrack — everything from Kid Rock to Run-D.M.C. to Twisted Sister — enhances the antic mood, and the rest of the tech package is good to go.

But be forewarned: After you see “Road Trip,” it may be months, if not years, before you can order French toast with a straight face and a settled stomach.

Production: A DreamWorks Pictures production in association with the Montecito Picture Co. Produced by Daniel Goldberg, Joe Medjuck. Executive producers, Ivan Reitman, Tom Pollock. Directed by Todd Phillips. Screenplay, Phillips, Scot Armstrong.
Crew: Camera (Technicolor), Mark Irwin; editor, Sheldon Kahn; production designer, Clark Hunter; art director, Max Biscoe; costume designer, Peggy Stamper; music, Mike Simpson; music supervisor, Peter Afterman; sound (Dolby Digital/DTS/SDDS), Jonathan “Earl” Stein; assistant director, Michael Neumann. Reviewed AMC Studio 30, Houston, April 19, 2000. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 91 MIN.
With: Josh - Breckin Meyer E.L. - Seann William Scott Beth - Amy Smart Rubin - Paulo Costanzo Kyle - D.J. Qualls Tiffany - Rachel Blanchard Jacob - Anthony Rapp Earl Edwards - Fred Ward Barry - Tom Green Motel Clerk - Andy Dick Ed - Ethan Suplee French Toast Guy - Horatio Sanz Tour Group Mom - Rhonda Griffis Sperm Bank Nurse - Marla Scuharetza Barry’s Grandma - Ellen Albertini Dow Barry’s Grandpa - Edmund Lyndeck Professor Anderson - Wendell B. Harris Jr.

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May 19, 2000 FILM REVIEW Restaurant Protocol and Other Helpful Tips By STEPHEN HOLDEN Van Redin/ DreamWorks Pictures About to embark on a memorable meal, DJ Qualls in "Road Trip." Related Articles • Current Film Video • Video: Selected Scenes and Trailer From the Film 'Road Trip' Forum • Join a Discussion on Current Film oad Trip" has a serious lesson to impart. Never, ever send a plate of French toast back to a restaurant kitchen because it happens to be sprinkled with powdered sugar. If that plate should be returned denuded of the dreaded topping by a waiter who seems a tad too obsequious when he plops it down in front of you, it's probably because he knows where that French toast has just been, and you don't. And trust me, you don't want to. If you have any notions of eating what is smilingly put before you, think again, no matter how appetizing it may appear. The soon-to-be notorious French toast sequence in "Road Trip," this season's probable hit in the post-teenage gross-out genre revived two years ago by "There's Something About Mary," is one of more than half a dozen such sequences that should keep young audiences chortling, snorting and snickering over the next several weeks. Because "Road Trip" doesn't feature stars of the magnitude of Cameron Diaz, Ben Stiller and Matt Dillon, it may not make as much money as its prototype. But it reveals its director Todd Phillips and his screenwriting partner Scot Armstrong as clever mad scientists of dumb cinematic raunch. They know exactly how far to push the envelope without earning their film an NC-17 rating. Both seem to possess a demonic understanding of how buried in the deepest recesses of the primmest sensibility lurks a pimply, potty-mouthed adolescent yanking down his pants and screaming for attention. Vying with French toast for No. 1 on the list of the movie's farcically raunchy bits is a scene set in a sperm bank in which an alarmingly aggressive nurse helps an unsuspecting young man discover the erogenous potential of his nether parts. Then there's a corpulent woman's seduction of a chicken-chested male virgin so skinny he makes Don Knotts look like a Charles Atlas graduate. Like the drugged-dog jokes and the hair gel sequence in "Mary" and the pie and beer scenes in last year's "American Pie," "Road Trip's" carefully planted comic shocks are this movie's primary raison d'être. Yet even in these tactics there can be discerned the glimmerings of an agenda. For one thing, Beth (Amy Smart), the flaxen-haired college girl who is the movie's closest thing to a heroine, is sexually forward in a way that only designated "sluts" are allowed to be in Hollywood movies. Far from being punished for her lustful ways in "Road Trip," she is ultimately rewarded with something like true love. Chalk one up for girl power. The sperm bank scene, for all its outrageous exaggeration, insinuates a more polymorphous perverse view of male sexuality than Hollywood movies almost ever allow. And as comical as it appears with its clashing body types, the (interracial) sex scene has an underlying sweetness. His sexual initiation transforms the movie's 97-pound weakling into a psychic he-man who musters the courage to stand up to his bullying dad. Most of "Road Trip" follows the desperate cross-country dash of Josh (Breckin Meyer), a student at Ithaca College, and three fellow students to Texas to intercept a pornographic home video that was accidentally mailed to Josh's longtime sweetheart at the University of Austin. In that video, Josh, who has pledged his fidelity to his 1,800-mile-distant girlfriend, is shown being seduced by Beth, with whom he won a date at an auction. To make the trip, the boys strong-arm Kyle (DJ Qualls), a quivering little milquetoast whom they normally wouldn't give the time of day, into lending them his father's car with the implicit promise that he is now one of them. It almost goes without saying that the precious vehicle is doomed. But the manner of its destruction, following a spectacular flying leap across the gap in a rickety wooden bridge, is as funny an auto demolition as any movie has given us in some time. Like "There's Something About Mary," "Road Trip" has the loose shambling structure of a rock 'n' roll shaggy dog story and no pretenses to realism. Where "Mary" had a strolling troubadour nudging the story along, "Road Trip" is narrated by Barry (the MTV comedy star Tom Green), the travelers' geeky friend, who remains in Ithaca so he can have the opportunity to feed white mice to his roommate's insatiable pet python. When the snake loses its appetite, Barry, crazed with visions of animal carnage, momentarily (and hilariously) confuses himself with the reptile. If "Road Trip" is a hit, it is likely to inspire the usual puritanical hand-wringing about the foul state of movies and Hollywood's going to hell in a handbasket. But if you think back a few years, this movie is a lot funnier (and, dare I say, smarter) than the last cycle of gross-out movies initiated by "Porky's." As we all know, bad taste is timeless. And sometimes it can be so funny that you can't help laughing. "Road Trip" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has sexual situations, nudity, strong language and many pungently off-color jokes.

Road Trip (film)

Road trip french toast scene

Road Trip is a 2000 American comedy film directed by Todd Phillips and written by Scot Armstrong and Phillips. The film stars Breckin Meyer , Seann William Scott , Paulo Costanzo , and DJ Qualls as four college friends who embark on an 1800-mile road trip to retrieve an illicit tape mistakenly mailed to a girlfriend.

Critical reception

Josh and Tiffany were long time friends and high school sweethearts. They both had to face a long distance relationship when Josh enrolls to University of Ithaca and Tiffany enrolls to the University of Austin. They made a promise to be true to each other and call each other every day. But when Tiffany doesn't call Josh or answer any of his calls, Josh begins worrying that Tiffany is seeing another man (actually, her maternal grandfather died). To show that he is still in love with her, he makes a daily recorded video log to her. After a one-night stand with his friend Beth, Josh discovers that his sex with Beth has been taped, and, through a series of misunderstandings, the tape was sent to Tiffany instead of his latest blog entry. This prompts a road trip in which Josh and his friends set out for Austin to intercept the tape before Tiffany gets a chance to view it.

The fictional University of Ithaca is based on both Ithaca College and Cornell University both located in Ithaca, New York . Filming took place on the campuses of Woodward Academy , Georgia Tech, Emory University , and the University of Georgia . The university seen in a flyover in the opening scene is actually Harvard University , the same footage was later used in the film Old School in 2003. The diner scene was shot in Lawrenceville, Georgia at the Gwinnett Diner, as it says on the coffee mugs. One of the final scenes of the tour was filmed at Founders Park at the University of Southern California .

Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 57% based on 91 reviews. The consensus is: "Some humor is hit or miss, depending on the audience tastes, but the movie is funny overall. Mixed reviews for the cast, especially for MTV 's Tom Green ." On Metacritic , the film has a score of 55 out of 100 based on 32 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

The film opened up on May 19, 2000 alongside Dinosaur and Small Time Crooks . And was at #3 at the North American box office making US$15,484,004 in its opening weekend.

A direct-to-video sequel entitled Beer Pong was released on August 11, 2009, this time by Paramount Famous Productions as Paramount Pictures had acquired DreamWorks' back catalog in its 2006 purchase of the company (since undone). Only two of the original cast or crew appear in the sequel film, DJ Qualls as Kyle Edwards and Rhoda Griffis as Tour Group Mom.

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Critics Consensus

Some humor is hit or miss, depending on the audience tastes, but the movie is funny overall. Mixed reviews for the cast, especially for MTV's Tom Green. Read critic reviews

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Road trip videos, road trip photos.

Josh (Breckin Meyer) videotapes his affair with another girl and accidentally mails it to his girlfriend. Discovering the mistake, he tows two of his college buddies -- and one not-so-eager kid who happens to own the car -- on a raucous 1,800-mile road trip from Ithaca, N.Y., to Austin, Texas, to save his lifelong romance.

Rating: R (Drug Use|Crude Humor|Language|Strong Sexual Content)

Genre: Comedy

Original Language: English

Director: Todd Phillips

Producer: Daniel Goldberg , Joe Medjuck

Writer: Todd Phillips , Scot Armstrong

Release Date (Theaters): May 19, 2000 wide

Release Date (Streaming): Aug 1, 2013

Box Office (Gross USA): $68.5M

Runtime: 1h 34m

Distributor: DreamWorks SKG

Production Co: Montecito Picture Company, DreamWorks SKG

Sound Mix: Dolby Stereo, DTS, SDDS, Surround, Dolby Digital, Dolby SR

Aspect Ratio: Flat (1.85:1)

Cast & Crew

Seann William Scott

Breckin Meyer

Josh Porter

Kyle Edwards

Earl Edwards

Motel Clerk

Rachel Blanchard

Tiffany Henderson

Bobby Place

Tour Group Member

Jessica Cauffiel

Tiffany Henderson of Boston

Frank Girardeau

Barry Manilow

Rhoda Griffis

Tour Group Mom

Wendell B. Harris Jr.

Professor Anderson

Rachel Marinacci

Richard Peterson

Anthony Rapp

Ethan Suplee

Daniel Emery Taylor

Paulo Costanzo

Todd Phillips

Scot Armstrong

Daniel Goldberg

Joe Medjuck

Tom Pollock

Executive Producer

Ivan Reitman

Steven Spielberg

Cinematographer

Sheldon Kahn

Film Editing

Michael Simpson

Original Music

Clark Hunter

Production Design

Art Director

Traci Kirshbaum

Set Decoration

Peggy Stamper

Costume Design

Ann Goulder

Nancy Nayor

Michael Neuman

First Assistant Director

Tony Kupersmith

Construction Coordinator

Robin O'Brien

News & Interviews for Road Trip

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Todd Phillips Discusses "Old School" Sequel Ideas

Critic Reviews for Road Trip

Audience reviews for road trip.

If your into raunchy humour you'll love Todd (the hangover) Phillips' teen road comedy. A miscast Breckin Meyer leads the group with funny Seann William Scott and Tom Green supporting. It wasn't hilarious but it's dumb funny forgettable fluff. However, there was also a stupid subplot involving Tom Green feeding a snake which I thought was a boring stretched joke. It's all over the place but...it's okay.

There may be only five moments of actual comedy in Road Trip, but those five moments are some knee-slappers.

Not the best comedy, but one of those you watch and think "this is some shit i'd do with my friends"

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