Director Michael Winterbottom’s “The Trip,” a largely improvised road trip through the English countryside starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, has been picked up for U.S. distribution by IFC Films.
The film, which was for the most part well-received by critics at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, is a compilation of footage shot for a British TV series that has yet to air. In it, Coogan and Brydon reprise the roles they created in Winterbottom’s “Tristam Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story,” trotting out a wide variety of impersonations as they visit restaurants, inns and historic sites in the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales.
Writing from Toronto, Chandra Menard called the film “gut-busting funny,” while Todd Brown said it was “as funny, charming, and heartfelt a piece of work as you're likely to see on screen this year.”
Ray Bennett, on the other hand, thought the film was listless, lazy and indulgent.
Winterbottom’s films include “24 Hour Party People,” “Wonderland,” “A Mighty Heart” and “The Killer Inside Me.”
"We are thrilled to be working again with IFC,” said Andrew Eaton, co-director of Revolution Films, in the press release announcing the acquisition. “When they started doing impressions of Steve and Rob as Michael Caine, we knew we had found the right home for the film."
