College Road Trip

Martin
Lawrence's long, sad devolution from the poor man's young Eddie Murphy to the
poor man's late-period Eddie Murphy continues with College Road Trip. Looking back at Lawrence's rocky
career, the descent from X-rated riffs on female hygiene to G-rated Disney
comedies with Donny Osmond seems dispiritingly inevitable. College Road Trip boasts the same
cynical combination of slapstick and sentimentality as such previous
family-friendly Lawrence joints as Big Momma's House and Rebound, only this time out the formula has
been reversed. Where the earlier films undercut rampant slapstick shenanigans
with drips of schmaltzy sentiment, Road Trip alternates vast expanses of sappy
sentiment—fans of heartfelt conversations about feelings set to gently
tinkling pianos will have a field day—with intermittent bursts of labored
physical comedy. In a bid to tap into the lucrative Dr. Doolittle market, the filmmakers have given
Lawrence a super-intelligent pig as a foil. Oh, how the hacky have fallen!
Maybe they'll give Cuba Gooding Jr. the lead in the sequel.