Hella Bumpy
Fans of high concept, goofy, emotional dramedy take note, but be warned. The ‘goofy’ is trumped by the dumb.
The first Ride
Director: Nam Dae-joong • Writer: Nam Dae-joong
Starring: Kang Ha-neul, Kim Young-kwang, Kang Young-seok, Cha Eun-woo
South Korea • 1hr 56mins
Opens Hong Kong November 13 • IIA
Grade: C-
Normally, when you get a movie about three or four friends taking a road trip or jetting off to some exotic location it’s because they’re doing something for the last time. And they’re always lifelong friends too. It’s before a wedding (kissing bachelorhood good-bye in The Hangover), or to reconnect after losing touch (at the Essence Festival in randy New Orleans in Girls Trip). Admittedly director Nam Dae-joong fulfilled those duties in his 2016 dramedy The Last Ride, about kid with ALS who asks his pals to grant him a final wish of sex following an accident that’s likely to hasten his demise. Nam is back with The First Ride | 퍼스트 라이드, which centres on a trip to an exotic locale a decade in the making for a group of buddies since middle school. The First Ride saves itself from a D rating because it’s spit-polished to within an inch of its life, it has solid location shooting in Thailand (and the tourism board won’t let you forget it) and is the picture of unchallenging entertainment.
And I get it. I do. A vacation adventure has to start with a goofy misunderstanding in order to set the table, the mechanics of which collapse with a modicum of logic and end the story in nanoseconds. I’m fine with accepting these goofy misunderstandings – or in-world conventions or story rules, whatever you want to call them. But movie, meet me at least half way, and don’t cheat. The First Ride cheats when it’s not being straight up boneheaded. But I’ll admit I’m also in the minority on this one. It was a modest hit when it opened at home a couple of weeks ago, and the preview audience was tickled. To each their cinema.
High school boys. Uh-huh
That doesn’t make Nam’s script any less lazy or his character choices any less confounding. The four friends in question meet in elementary school when wee Yeon-min, a premie baby, finds himself an outsider. He’s six when Tae-jung, Do-jin and Geum-bok tell him to hang with them, and the rest is history. As 32-year-olds highschoolers, Tae-jung (Kang Ha-neul, Pilot) is an ace student on the fast track to public service; Do-jin (TV star Kim Young-kwang) plans on following Yeon-min (Astro’s Cha Eun-woo, allegedly the inspiration for Jinu in KPop Demon Hunters) down the road to DJing; and Geum-bok (another TV fixture, Kang Young-seok) is trying to dodge life as a Buddhist monk. When Yeon-min announces his family is relocating to New Zealand after graduation, the four plan a trip to Thailand as a last hurrah, but of course never get there because they lose their bus (this is the goofy misunderstanding). Ten years later they’ve drifted apart. Tae-jung is a councilman’s aide, Geum-bok is a budding tattooist, and Do-jin has been institutionalised for mental health care. Yeon-nim is nowhere to be found, but the three come together to finally take that trip to Thailand, to the Songkran Music Festival (brought to you by Pepsi!), toting a life-sized pillow effegy of Yeon-min so he’s with them in spirit.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to clock what’s going on, and Nam’s lazy writing manifests in a series of contrived events that manoeuvre the trio into an overdue emotional reckoning (in the dumbest of all possible plot turns). Things start to unravel when they get to Thailand, and get into hijinks that land them in jail (twice), at a crappy hotel and make them sudden Instagram stars for their various misadventures. Also along for the ride is Ok-shim (Secret singer and Kang’s Pilot co-star Han Sun-hwa, who deserves much better), Tae-jung’s would-be girlfriend who tags along – uninvited – like some kind of sad mascot to be abused and humiliated at every turn by Tae-jung. No shit, he conspires to abandon her, embarrass her, belittle her and consantly reminder her how uninterested in her he truly is. That said, I think we’re supposed to find her charming. Nam has Ok-shim barging in on a private weekend that’s important to these four friends, and plays the psycho stalker every chance she gets, most “hilariously” by eating a piece of notepaper that an attractive bartender, Sylvia (Kang Ji-young), has jotted her phone number on for Tae-jung. It’s true love, you see. He’s Ok-shim’s no matter how often Tae-jung says he isn’t. That this behaviour works is… disturbing. Disturbing because there isn’t a lick of aware self-writing for Han to make into a smarter gag. The First Ride is shambolic, unfocused and unfunny, never clear on what it’s about or what it wants to say, even though leaning into a story just about male friends being vulnerable and honest with each other on a vacation weekend would have been story enough. But there were plenty of giggles on preview night. Nam got something right. Damned if I know what.