With all of the buzz it is getting, Lionsgate’s raunchy, unhinged road trip comedy Joy Ride starring Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, Stephanie Hsu, and Sabrina Wu could be the comedy of the summer.
Directed by Adele Lim and written by Cherry Chevapravatdumrong & Teresa Hsiao, Joy Ride follows four unlikely friends who embark on a journey which starts off as a business trip in Asia for Audrey (Park). When she decides to find her birth mother, her messy childhood BFF Lolo (Cola), her bougie college friend turned Chinese soap star Kat (Hsu) and Lolo’s bizarre cousin with a heart of gold Deadeye (Wu) set off to help her but everything immediately goes sideways in this wild, unexpected journey of sex, drugs, debauchery as much as it is a story about bonding, self-discovery, friends, love traditional family and chosen family.
During the hilarious press conference for Joy Ride, the Lim, Chevapravatdumrong, and Hsiao were joined by the the core four of the cast as well as the blatantly sexualized “hot boys” of the movie, Chris Pang, Rohain Arora, and Alexander Hodge. Cola spoke about how she was excited for the world to see this movie and how it speaks to friendship and chosen family.
“The themes of this film are friendship, discovering who you are and chosen family,” said Cola. “You can’t get through life without special people next to you. I mean… it’s onscreen and offscreen, you know?”
Lim chimed in, “We are this crazy, super fun, batshit comedy but our heart is authentic and it’s true. It’s not just about the Asian experience. All of us, our people came from somewhere, we came from somewhere…”
She continued to say that there many of us have experienced that feeling of not belonging on our journey. “Maybe we had to prove ourselves extra just to kind of fit in and feel like we had to do something to make ourselves feel worthy of the spaces we were in. One of the things that we explored in the movie — between all of the butt jokes and the chlamydia — was that thing of when you find your people, you’re always home. And that’s where we landed.”
“I think in terms of chosen family, the magical moment for any kind of storyteller or artist is when something kind of mirrors or opens up a part of your own personal life,” Park said. “I realize now that chosen family is also [about knowing] who you are [because] you can’t go about choosing the right way unless you really understand who you are….what you have to give.”
Joy Ride is currently playing in theaters.