Sommerleigh Pollonais – Senior Writer

Bad Trip is what happens when you take the prank show antics of Jackass/Bad Grandpa and add a scripted story to it.

While we were watching this my hubby kept asking: “How come no one recognises them? Tiffany Haddish is really famous, as well as Eric Andre in his own right.” The thing is, most people would never suspect a famous person would be pranking them, or working in a juice bar/car wash/phone repair shop. And even if they thought “he/she looks familiar”, we tend to doubt ourselves, or are too embarrassed to outright ask, so pranks like these are totally possible.

Eric Andre has his own show on Adult Swim that’s very similar to this one with the same director, Kitao Sakurai, so this stuff is totally second nature for them. Andre, Haddish and Lil Rel Howery (Get Out/Bird Box) have good chemistry, are all naturally comedic people and they don’t fail to make you cringe and laugh at their antics. Even Micheala Conlin (Bones) gets in on the antics that make you wonder, how the hell did they get away with that!

Of course the laughs a movie like this can generate depends heavily on what you the audience member finds funny. I know my laughter came more from the reaction of the people around them than from the actual pranks. And the “plot” is paper thin here because it’s just a tool to get from one skit to the next. It also has a dated feel to it, because it’s so similar to those prank shows like Punk’d and I know I zoned out a couple of times, as I was basically just waiting to see the next stunt they pulled on their unexpected audience.

So if you were a fan of Jackass back in the day then I think you’ll find Bad Trip hilarious. But if you go in expecting a black comedy in the vein of Friday, How High, or anything starring Kevin Hart, you might come out of this one disappointed.

Score: 5 out of 10 

For my Quick Bite review of Coffee and Kareem you can click here.