bad trip pink car

'Bad Trip' secrets: How Eric André, Tiffany Haddish pranked people with real crashes, fake walls

It takes work to make the stupid pranks of "Bad Trip."

For each bizarre, sometimes dangerous  and – let's just call it – moronic gag on the raucous Netflix comedy, filmmakers would seriously sweat out details for weeks.

The trick: Fooling unsuspecting members of the public into believing Eric André and Lil Rel Howery, playing best friends Chris and Bud in the unscripted road trip comedy, had flipped their car, or Tiffany Haddish (as Bud's escapee sister Trina) had plowed a police car into an art gallery.

Then, capture incredulous bystander reaction on hidden cameras.

"It's a fascinating process, figuring out how to do something that seems crazy impossible," says director Kitao Sakurai. "But using tricks and sleight of hand, you realize that it's actually crazy but possible.

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Here's how "Bad Trip" pulled off its best pranks:

'Bad Trip,' real peril: Stars of Netflix comedy found themselves in actual danger: 'Wow, I could die'

The car vacuum mishap required a breakaway onesie with a hook

The comedy's opening skits features André's Chris working as a car-detailing attendant in Los Angeles whose entire uniform gets sucked into the power vacuum cleaner.

André wore a specially made breakaway onesie work uniform with small hooks attached to a super-strength invisible line in a vacuum tube. When André yelled, "Hey, I'm stuck," that was the cue for the hidden film crew to pull the line, yanking the breakaway uniform off – leaving Chris naked after his dream girl Maria (Michaela Conlin) pulled up.

"That took a lot of trial and error to get it right," says Sakurai. The third mark was the perfect foil, even helping to hide naked André in his car's back seat.

The event bouncer took his detail seriously

For a scene where Chris tries to enter an art gallery party hosted by Maria, filmmakers hired a bouncer outside a fancy Los Angeles location, giving strict instructions only to allow invited attendees inside. Chris was not on the list. The bouncer rebuffed André's multiple attempts to enter, but finally, begrudgingly allowed him in on the sly seemingly for the sake of true love.

So romantic, right? Until the bouncer found he had been pranked. "He was not happy. He had a long, seething moment," says André, who needed the bouncer to sign a release form for "Bad Trip" to use the scene. "We really had to massage his emotions after the prank to get him to sign. But he did."

The car really flipped on an Atlanta street

Howery's Bud was not at the wheel for the film's dramatic car flip. However, "Bad Trip" stunt coordinator Charles Grisham flipped the film's pink Cadillac into the air on an Atlanta street during a controlled stunt. "It had to be a precision driver," says Sakurai. André and Howery got in the car afterward. A crowd of spectators taking part in a fake street art tour was brought past the carnage to see the two seemingly dazed stars emerging from the upside-down wreckage.

The ensuing screen argument between the two characters was made even more dramatic by a real, controlled fire bursting dramatically from the car.

Tiffany Haddish drove into an art gallery

When Chris does finally get to Maria at her art show, the moment is ruined by Haddish's Trina, who drives her stolen police car literally into the gallery. To pull that stunt off, Sakurai set up a believable gallery, with credible art pieces and invited guests. The unsuspecting guests were discreetly kept away from a fake brick wall. "We set up a system to make sure all the art admirers were in a safe zone," says Sakurai.

Given the all-clear signal by the stunt coordinator, Haddish was behind the wheel as her car plowed through the fake wall into the building – with the car attached to guiding wires to keep it on course. As the guests looked on in shock, Haddish emerged and turned her destruction onto the remaining art pieces.

It takes practice to make a drunken fall

André's Chris appeared to have too much alcohol at the Electric Cowboy bar in Kennesaw, Georgia. He stood in a precarious perch above the bar to make a drunken toast to his friend before falling. André practiced the 15-foot tumble into a nearby container, with hidden padding beneath folded boxes, the day before. "I did it over and over so that it looked fluid when it was real," he says. 

After the true tumble, a crew member posing as a concerned patron discreetly fixed a tube that ran up Andre's body, enabling his Chris to projectile vomit – actually a combination of material including pea soup and vegetables.

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A smoothie shop employee with butterflies in his stomach and a bleeding right hand sits next to an older gentleman on a bench. “Can I ask you something?” he prefaces. The worker then proceeds to babble about his crush, Maria. Should he follow her to New York City, and leave Florida behind? The older man offers advice—speaking from the heart—and it fills the younger man’s soul, so much that he leaps from the bench and bursts into song. It’s this young guy’s big romantic moment, and he dances away before almost getting hit by a car, and then sings at people inside a mall, in which one patron tries to side-kick him.  

This hilarious sequence, which overlaps cliché storytelling with the unassuming public, is just one of many endearing moments in “Bad Trip,” a hidden camera comedy gem starring Eric André , Lil Rel Howery , and Tiffany Haddish that’s finally coming out on Netflix. Directed by Kitao Sakurai , the previous director behind numerous episodes of “The Eric André Show,” it shows an evolution in the hidden camera subgenre, given its warming spirit about people. Unlike the films that previously defined the subgenre, it’s not so much about creating a freak show from unsuspecting extras, but in noting what one would do when confronted with someone as delusional as André’s character Chris. Natural human behavior can be extremely funny, and Sakurai and André know it’s possible to bring it out of people without being mean-spirited. Footage in the end credits of the real people excited to learn that they’re in a movie—a comfort for us as well—confirms the chaos is controlled physically and emotionally, and that allows it to be a party.    

“Bad Trip” is an excellent showcase for Eric André—it’s more mainstream than his talk-show-in-hell “The Eric André Show” and less watered down than his recent resume-boosting, commercial work like “The Lion King” and elsewhere. This role lets him scream, sprint, crash into things, and show off that he’s a sweetheart who wants to include you his absurdity. It’s no stretch to say that André is going to be a huge comedic force—I knew this when I caught his Legalize Everything stand-up tour in Chicago in 2019, when he had a sold-out Chicago Theater completely wrapped up in his FaceTime-ing with the parents of random audience members. He’s an affable anarchist with Robin Williams-like verve, and this project lets his burgeoning persona run wild alongside what the film advertises as “Real People. Real Pranks.”  

André's hilarious earnest Chris is joined in the movie by Lil Rel Howery, who would have been known enough at the time of filming from his scene-stealing turn in “ Get Out ,” but is disguised as Chris’ reserved friend Bud. They have adorable chemistry as two friends in Florida who decide to drive to New York to reunite Chris with his high school crush Maria ( Michaela Conlin ) after two disastrous brief run-ins at Eric’s jobs. They support each other, like when Chris gets extremely drunk at a cowboy bar, or Bud finds himself inside a Porta Potty. Chris is the wide-eyed dreamer, and Bud is the demure rationalist. Their chemistry is as pure as the Golden Girls, so “Thank You For Being a Friend” is featured prominently in the soundtrack, in between scenes of slapstick pranks that further their road trip.  

When Bud and Chris need a car to get to New York City, they “borrow” the bright pink Crown Vic that belongs to Bud’s sister, Trina (Tiffany Haddish), who Bud fears but is relieved when she's put in jail for breaking house arrest. And yet soon enough, Haddish crawls out from under a prison bus, having broken out and starts looking for her car. When it’s not where she stored it, she hunts Bud and Chris up the Eastern seaboard, making for some incredibly funny, abrasive scenes of her confronting people about whether they’ve seen them or her car that has “Bad Bitch” written on the window. Haddish bulldozes into every set-piece, exemplifying the film’s over-the-top spirit. When talking to progressively uncomfortable strangers, she doesn’t miss a beat and she relishes the opportunity to appear dangerous; when she steals a cop car and burns out of a donut shop parking lot, it’s one of her many triumphant moments.  

“Bad Trip” is a collision of great improvisational actors and authentically bewildered reactions from people unaware that they’re now in Chris’ story—which makes Michaela Conlin’s performance as Maria all the more an essential middle to its Venn diagram. She enters the movie also as an innocent bystander, but that’s a deceptive comic energy that plays out in very funny ways as she pushes back against Chris’ delusions. In Chris’ prank-based daydreams, Conlin matches André’s intensity; that she has to play it straight in later scenes adds to the tension she creates, like when Chris tries to profess his love to her.  

Just how funny is “Bad Trip”? After two viewings, it’s one of those comedies with a stable laughing average and high replay value, even if it doesn’t always hit you as hard. It knowingly plays a hit-and-miss game, and some scenes don’t entirely work (like a grocery store drug trip that plays out like a soft tribute to “The Eric Andre Show”), while other pranks go for discomfort more than big laughs (like when Chris gets gas springing all over a gas station). But the movie has speediness on its side, with pacing that takes the plotting from one prank to the next, often including crowds of people in the latest big dramatic confrontation that comes from Bud and Chris’ expected emotional arc. (A sudden car crash sequence is particularly well planned out, with cameras and extras ready nearby.) It’s a steady build to its ultimate destination of NYC, and every major set piece is constructed to bubble with discomfort before then skyrocketing over the top. An early scene at Chris’ smoothie shop job only begins with him making the drinks without spoons—it escalates to awkward tension with disgusted, annoyed customers, and then boom, a laugh-out-loud, gory finale that hits with impeccable, unexpected timing.  

If certain parts of “Bad Trip” aren’t as out-and-out cry-laughing as the work put into them desires, the story is still involving as it adds the dimensionality of unscripted human behavior. And it doesn’t continue the hidden camera movie’s waning intention of dunking on dummies, a factor that also makes this story more fluid than the start-and-stop traps, primed for reaction shots, in something like “Jackass”-spinoff like “Bad Grandpa.” That’s the true sweet spot, in how its pranks are engineered to get the unexpected to interact with Bud, Chris, and or Trina, and see if strangers try to help. (“You turned on us!” says Chris, after a golfer starts swinging a club at Chris and Bud while their penises are enjoined by a Chinese fingertrap.) An amazing scene comes at a tense mid-point, when Trina appears at a restaurant, spreading around fliers with Bud and Chris’ dopey faces on them, advertising her desire to kill the two. She leaves. Bud and Chris then show up at the same place minutes later, and everyone’s response, with some people trying to warn them, and others not wanting to get caught in the middle, is incredible. “Bad Trip” knows how to stir things up, and its funniest scenes often involve real people getting in the mix, tested by the brilliant skills of André, Howery, and Haddish. The ways that some people react to their pranks might shock you in some ways, and absolutely will not in others.  

Now available on Netflix.

Nick Allen is the former Senior Editor at RogerEbert.com and a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Film credits.

Bad Trip (2021)

Rated R for crude sexual content, pervasive language, some graphic nudity and drug use.

Eric André as Chris

Lil Rel Howery as Bud

Tiffany Haddish as Trina Malone

Michaela Conlin as Maria Li

• Kitao Sakurai

Writer (story)

• Andrew Barchilon

Cinematographer

• Andrew Laboy
• Sascha Stanton Craven
• Matthew Kosinski
• Caleb Swyers
• Ludwig Göransson
• Joseph Shirley

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‘Bad Trip’ Review: Tiffany Haddish Steals the Show in Eric Andre’s Goofy Hidden Camera Romp

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It only takes Eric André a couple of minutes to get naked in “ Bad Trip ,” and another half hour before he’s sodomized by a gorilla, which should give you a sense of how quickly this goofy hidden camera romp careens from zero to crazy and just keeps going. In director Kitao Sakurai’s quasi-scripted comedy, the comedian plays a klutzy reprobate who drives from Miami to New York in search of his high school crush, but the flimsy plot is little more than an excuse for André to screw with people up and down the Eastern Seaboard.

Anyone familiar with André’s aggressive ability to push people into cringe-inducing circumstances will find plenty of that anarchic spirit on display here, usually outpacing the story around it. But it’s also given proper context: André’s devious style and wit is matched by a bumbling turn by Lil Rel Howery as his best pal, and even upstaged by a muscular Tiffany Haddish, as Howery’s sister and an escaped convict, who’s constantly on their tail. Together, the trio shows so much investment in the hidden camera concept that the entertainment factor often comes from simply watching them pull it off time and again.

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For the past decade, André’s vulgar prank-art has split the difference between “Jackass” and Sacha Baron Cohen, merging the zany physicality of the former with the sociological insight of the latter — though André’s less invested in bringing out the biases of his victims than simply using their shock as a distended punchline. Unlike the trippy Adult Swim excursions of “The Eric André Show,” however, “Bad Trip” forces André’s rascally in-your-face style into a jovial road trip formula that can’t help feeling less ambitious or satisfying than the stunts along the way.

The script, credited to André and Sakurai along with a few of their “Eric André Show” writers, seems pat enough: André plays Chris, a know-nothing troublemaker who veers from one job after the next, growing weary of the monotony as he tells his longtime pal Bud (Howery) that better times lie ahead. Of course, they don’t, and that’s just enough motivation for the pair to finally break free of their surroundings.

“Bad Trip” rises and falls on the basis of its gags, but they’re usually variations of the same formula. The movie essentially repeats one early stunt twice: Chris first sees old teen obsession Maria (Michaela Conlin) at an auto shop, where a mishap with a vacuum cleaner leaves him nude and cowering in a customer’s vehicle; next, she spots him behind the counter of a juice bar, where he accidentally mutilates his hand. In both cases, the actress enters and exits the scene without acknowledging the insanity on display, while André brilliantly coaxes random onlookers into playing a part in the scene.

All of that builds to a hilarious outdoor musical number in which André recognizes his need to find Maria back in New York, while more baffled people inadvertently become part of his show. Unlike “Borat” or “Bad Grandpa,” André isn’t presenting people with a cartoonish caricature. Instead, it’s the utter blandness of Chris that makes his unusual behavior so shocking — he’s an ordinary guy untethered from the common sense of the world around him, and it’s always hilarious to watch as he goads people into providing the reaction shots he needs to punctuate each joke.

In any case, “Bad Trip” ambles along, with Chris and Bud finally hitting the road in the hot-pink car owned by Bud’s sister Trina (Haddish) while she’s locked up. Equipped with a “Bad Bitch” license plate, the vehicle seems like an extension of Trina’s irascible persona. (“It’s like Pepto Bismol — it fixes anything!” she says. “Even though I like to drink Pepsi Bismol with a little Hennesy.”) When Trina sneaks away from her prison transport (freaking out a random guy on the sidewalk, of course), the movie instantly belongs to Haddish, in her most outright satisfying and ludicrous turn since she stole the show with “Girls Trip.” In this case, “Bad Trip” doesn’t get much better than the image of Trina flipping the bird from stolen police car after ripping off its driver’s seat door.

But it does get more familiar, with Chris and Bud enduring accidental drug trips, bar fights, and various other complications as they work their way toward New York, which arrives with a series of naturally chaotic showdowns. By the time they get to the aforementioned gorilla, some viewers may feel as though they got the basic idea. But there’s a certain wily energy that surrounds even the most ludicrous scenes, the sense that André and his cohorts are so invested in reigniting lowball comedy that they’re willing to put their actual lives on the line to earn the laughs.

The credits of “Bad Trip” do a victory lap on the whole routine, peeking behind the scenes as André and others reveal the candid cameras to their unwitting supporting players. Unlike Baron Cohen’s work, André seems to invite his targets to crack up with him, and they’re more than happy to oblige. “Bad Trip” is an extension of that all-inclusive approach: It’s a blunt instrument of absurdity, but that’s also what makes it so much fun.

“Bad Trip” is now streaming on Netflix .

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‘Bad Trip’: Eric Andre, Tiffany Haddish and Lil Rel Howery Prank America

• By David Fear

It makes a certain kind of sense that Bad Trip, Eric André’s entry into the Gonzo Comedy Hall of Fame (see: Jackass, Borat, Bad Grandpa ), starts in Florida. Not that the other 49 states of this fine U.S. of A. don’t have their share of goofballs, chowderheads, numbskulls, fuck-ups and jag-offs; it’s just that this particular Southeastern one has a reputation for American eccentricity that results in eyes bugging out, jaws dropping and shit going very wrong. Those “Florida Man” headlines are well-earned.

And the “Florida Man” energy is strong in this one, right from the get-go: No sooner has the comedian appeared onscreen, rocking a mechanic’s jumpsuit and washing a BMW in a West Grove car wash, then something genuinely WTF happens. If you’ve seen the trailer, you know it involves a vacuum hose and full frontal nudity. It also involves a customer who has no idea that he’s part of an elaborate prank that’s been set up for several rolling cameras, someone who is neither in on the joke nor the butt of it. The guy is just an innocent bystander who suddenly finds himself in the middle of a situation he hadn’t planned for or even possibly imagined, while a naked man tries desperately not to show his dick and balls to the world. “Florida Man Loses Clothes, Flashes Customers in Bizarre Car Detailing Accident.” Normally, you can’t make this stuff up. André engineers it like he’s in charge of a NASA launch.

The scene is over way, way too soon — a problem that plagues a lot of Bad Trip ‘s gotcha scenarios, but that’s the risk you take when you’re literally putting your ass out there when making variable-heavy comedy — but it still does what it needs to do, i.e. set the tone and set up the “story.” Note the scare quotes; abandon all hope, ye who want a narrative here, which is frankly missing the point. This is no more a movie than The Eric André Show is a talk show. (Though the director, Kitao Sakurai, has also worked on that Adult Swim gem.) It’s a delivery system for strung-together Situationist happenings and performance art, a fancy way of saying that everyday people get co-opted into sometime highly elaborate, often hilarious, remarkably effective smart-comics-doing-really-dumb-and-gross shit. Including, in one case, a bit that may or may not have involved being covered in actual fecal matter. We don’t know just how Jackass things got here.

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Right, sorry, the story: So when Chris (André) is cleaning the unsuspecting gent’s car, a second customer drives up. Her name is Maria (Michaela Conlin), and she was Chris’s high school crush. He was going to ask her out, but then whoosh go his clothes. Later, he finds out she lives in New York and runs an art gallery. If he’s ever town, drop by and see her. So Chris grabs his best friend Bud (Lil Rel Howery), they take the pink Crown Victoria that belongs to Bud’s sister, Trina ( Tiffany Haddish ) — she’s in prison, it’s all good — and plan a road trip to visit Chris’s soulmate. When Trina “releases” herself from the clink, she finds out that her car’s been stolen and decides to track these guys down across the Eastern seaboard.

There’s a version of Bad Trip in which you pay attention to this tender story of best friends who’ll do anything for each other, who have their ups and downs but still have each other’s backs, rednecks and psycho siblings and cops be damned. The version you’ll probably want to push to the forefront, however, is the one where these three comedians, respectively and together, stage the kind of truly outrageous shenanigans that make you wonder how the hell they got out of these scenes alive. Looking at my notes, I see nothing but a series of phrases: “Chinese Finger Trap,” “Smoothie Shop Blender,” “Cowboy Bar,” “Projectile Vomiting,” “A Priest,” “The Hamptons,” “Gorilla Selfie.” (That last one is genuinely above and beyond the call of duty.) To try and explain what they mean wouldn’t do the gags justice, though I will say that a sequence involving a a movie-musical number in a mall — which includes singing, dancing, a giant wedding cake and the threat of actual violence — is a work of genius.

In other, the sheer hilariousness of a number of individual bits here are enough to get you past slow spots and a few D.O.A. duds, and you come out of Bad Trip with a serious appreciation for this trio’s chops and ability to go with the flow. (Four, actually: Conlin can more than hold her own when she needs to.) And unlike the Jackass crew’s how-low-can-you-go competitions and Borat ‘s politicized exposés, there’s almost a sweetness to the way these folks prank the public. The everyday folks who find themselves having to deal with angry ex-cons or exchanges spiraling out of control aren’t marks; they’re more like collaborators in the movie’s “what if” set-ups. For every encounter in which you fear that André or Howery or Haddish are actually going to get the snot beat of out of them for antagonizing folks, there are a half dozen examples of people stepping in and defusing things, offering help, trying to de-escalate a blow-up. The end credits roll feature a bunch of “smile, you’re on Candid Camera” reveals that lead to smiles and yelps of “oh my god, that was crazy!” The joke’s not on them. They were just a key part of the trip.

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'Bad Trip'? More Like Awesome Trip!

Stephen Thompson

Aisha Harris

Eric Andre and Lil Rel Howery go on an outrageous adventure in the Netflix movie Bad Trip . NETFLIX hide caption

Eric Andre and Lil Rel Howery go on an outrageous adventure in the Netflix movie Bad Trip .

In the Netflix movie Bad Trip , Eric Andre runs into his high-school crush Maria, played by Michaela Conlin, then convinces his best friend Lil Rel Howery to join him on a road trip to New York City in a foolish bid to win her heart. They steal the bright pink car owned by Lil Rel's incarcerated sister, played by Tiffany Haddish, and their journey takes them through loud, ill-fated mishaps at a country bar, a roadside zoo and much more. The twist in Bad Trip is that each scene is also an elaborate prank, blending fiction with reality - with the mayhem taking place as real unsuspecting strangers react.

The audio was produced by Mallory Yu and edited by Jessica Reedy.

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

This mix of a scripted buddy comedy road movie and a real hidden camera prank show follows the outrageous misadventures of two buds stuck in a rut who embark on a cross-country road trip to ... Read all This mix of a scripted buddy comedy road movie and a real hidden camera prank show follows the outrageous misadventures of two buds stuck in a rut who embark on a cross-country road trip to NYC. The storyline sets up shocking real pranks. This mix of a scripted buddy comedy road movie and a real hidden camera prank show follows the outrageous misadventures of two buds stuck in a rut who embark on a cross-country road trip to NYC. The storyline sets up shocking real pranks.

• Kitao Sakurai
• Andrew Barchilon
• Michaela Conlin
• Lil Rel Howery
• 273 User reviews
• 57 Critic reviews
• 61 Metascore
• 1 nomination

• Chris Carey

• Trina Malone

• (as Cory Demeyers)

• Maria's Father

• (as Greg Smithaldridge)

• Joseph Stalin
• Ballroom Dancer
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Sacha Baron Cohen gave advice and input after he was shown an early cut of the film.
• Goofs A cameraman is clearly visible in the crowd during the puke scene in the Electric Cowboy bar.

Chris Carey : Chris Carey! From high school biology class! You know, Crazy Chris?

Maria Li : Um...

Chris Carey : Retard Chris?

Maria Li : Oh!

Chris Carey : Yeah! How the hell are you?

• Crazy credits The end credits show moments when extras in pivotal scenes find out that they were part of a film and that absurdity of what they just witnessed was not real. Also deleted scenes and alternate takes of certain scenes are shown throughout the remainder of the credits.
• Connections Featured in Half in the Bag: 2021 Movie Catch-Up (part 1 of 2) (2022)
• Soundtracks Soul on Top Written by Boca 45 (as Scott Hendy) & Louis Baker Performed by Boca 45 Courtesy of Mass Appeal Records

User reviews 273

• BigMezza827
• Jun 20, 2020
• How long is Bad Trip? Powered by Alexa
• March 26, 2021 (United States)
• United States
• Netflix Site
• Chuyến Đi Siêu Quậy
• Georgia, USA
• Orion Pictures
• BRON Studios
• Creative Wealth Media Finance
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 26 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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‘Bad Trip’: Eric Andre, Tiffany Haddish and Lil Rel Howery Prank America

André and friends take their public-outrageousness act on the road — and earn a spot in the gonzo comedy hall of fame.

Eric Andre and Lil Rel Howery in 'Bad Trip.'

It makes a certain kind of sense that Bad Trip, Eric André’s entry into the Gonzo Comedy Hall of Fame (see: Jackass, Borat, Bad Grandpa ), starts in Florida. Not that the other 49 states of this fine U.S. of A. don’t have their share of goofballs, chowderheads, numbskulls, fuck-ups and jag-offs; it’s just that this particular Southeastern one has a reputation for American eccentricity that results in eyes bugging out, jaws dropping and shit going very wrong. Those “Florida Man” headlines are well-earned.

And the “Florida Man” energy is strong in this one, right from the get-go: No sooner has the comedian appeared onscreen, rocking a mechanic’s jumpsuit and washing a BMW in a West Grove car wash, then something genuinely WTF happens. If you’ve seen the trailer, you know it involves a vacuum hose and full frontal nudity. It also involves a customer who has no idea that he’s part of an elaborate prank that’s been set up for several rolling cameras, someone who is neither in on the joke nor the butt of it. The guy is just an innocent bystander who suddenly finds himself in the middle of a situation he hadn’t planned for or even possibly imagined, while a naked man tries desperately not to show his dick and balls to the world. “Florida Man Loses Clothes, Flashes Customers in Bizarre Car Detailing Accident.” Normally, you can’t make this stuff up. André engineers it like he’s in charge of a NASA launch.

The scene is over way, way too soon — a problem that plagues a lot of Bad Trip ‘s gotcha scenarios, but that’s the risk you take when you’re literally putting your ass out there when making variable-heavy comedy — but it still does what it needs to do, i.e. set the tone and set up the “story.” Note the scare quotes; abandon all hope, ye who want a narrative here, which is frankly missing the point. This is no more a movie than The Eric André Show is a talk show. (Though the director, Kitao Sakurai, has also worked on that Adult Swim gem.) It’s a delivery system for strung-together Situationist happenings and performance art, a fancy way of saying that everyday people get co-opted into sometime highly elaborate, often hilarious, remarkably effective smart-comics-doing-really-dumb-and-gross shit. Including, in one case, a bit that may or may not have involved being covered in actual fecal matter. We don’t know just how Jackass things got here.

Right, sorry, the story: So when Chris (André) is cleaning the unsuspecting gent’s car, a second customer drives up. Her name is Maria (Michaela Conlin), and she was Chris’s high school crush. He was going to ask her out, but then whoosh go his clothes. Later, he finds out she lives in New York and runs an art gallery. If he’s ever town, drop by and see her. So Chris grabs his best friend Bud (Lil Rel Howery), they take the pink Crown Victoria that belongs to Bud’s sister, Trina ( Tiffany Haddish ) — she’s in prison, it’s all good — and plan a road trip to visit Chris’s soulmate. When Trina “releases” herself from the clink, she finds out that her car’s been stolen and decides to track these guys down across the Eastern seaboard.

There’s a version of Bad Trip in which you pay attention to this tender story of best friends who’ll do anything for each other, who have their ups and downs but still have each other’s backs, rednecks and psycho siblings and cops be damned. The version you’ll probably want to push to the forefront, however, is the one where these three comedians, respectively and together, stage the kind of truly outrageous shenanigans that make you wonder how the hell they got out of these scenes alive. Looking at my notes, I see nothing but a series of phrases: “Chinese Finger Trap,” “Smoothie Shop Blender,” “Cowboy Bar,” “Projectile Vomiting,” “A Priest,” “The Hamptons,” “Gorilla Selfie.” (That last one is genuinely above and beyond the call of duty.) To try and explain what they mean wouldn’t do the gags justice, though I will say that a sequence involving a a movie-musical number in a mall — which includes singing, dancing, a giant wedding cake and the threat of actual violence — is a work of genius.

In other, the sheer hilariousness of a number of individual bits here are enough to get you past slow spots and a few D.O.A. duds, and you come out of Bad Trip with a serious appreciation for this trio’s chops and ability to go with the flow. (Four, actually: Conlin can more than hold her own when she needs to.) And unlike the Jackass crew’s how-low-can-you-go competitions and Borat ‘s politicized exposés, there’s almost a sweetness to the way these folks prank the public. The everyday folks who find themselves having to deal with angry ex-cons or exchanges spiraling out of control aren’t marks; they’re more like collaborators in the movie’s “what if” set-ups. For every encounter in which you fear that André or Howery or Haddish are actually going to get the snot beat of out of them for antagonizing folks, there are a half dozen examples of people stepping in and defusing things, offering help, trying to de-escalate a blow-up. The end credits roll feature a bunch of “smile, you’re on Candid Camera” reveals that lead to smiles and yelps of “oh my god, that was crazy!” The joke’s not on them. They were just a key part of the trip.

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'Bad Trip' Uses Gross Pranks to Prove That America Isn't So Bad After All

Directed by Kitao Sakurai

BY Alex Hudson Published Mar 29, 2021

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This film was made in hidden camera style, with the actors performing these bits in front of real people unaware that they were part of a movie. In other words, this film was shot in the same manner as Borat.

The film opens in West Grove, Florida, where Chris Carey (Eric André) works at a car wash. He sees his high school crush, Maria Li (Michaela Conlin). He tries to finish up washing a car so he can say hi to her. Chris asks the (real-life) person whose car he’s cleaning to turn on the carpet vacuum. The vacuum sucks off Chris’ clothes, leaving him completely nude. He is unable to approach Maria because of this. Meanwhile, Chris’ best friend Bud Malone (Lil Rel Howery) is working at a cell phone repair shop. His crazy sister Trina (Tiffany Haddish) “robs” him in front of the store customers before taking off in her prized pink car nicknamed “Bad Bitch.” Bud is too scared to stop her. Chris and Bud hang out after work and discuss how their lives will change for the better in the future.

One year later, Chris is still working a menial job. He is now employed in a juice bar. Maria walks in and Chris flirts with her before asking her out for a cup of coffee. She politely declines as she is returning to New York City later that day. Before leaving, she explains that she owns an art gallery there and offers to show Chris around should he ever be in the City. Chris misconstrues her offer as a sign of romantic interest. As he daydreams, he sticks his hand in a blender where it is bloodily chopped up in front of the patrons.

Chris and some dancers perform a musical number about his love for Maria in a public park as well as a mall in front of amused bystanders. He finds Bud and convinces him to go on a road trip to New York to find Maria. They take Trina’s car as she is currently in jail. However, Trina manages to break out of jail (with the help of a bystander). Upon finding out that Bud has “stolen” her car, she vows to find and kill the duo.

Chris and Bud stop at a gas station in Georgia, where Chris breaks a gas pump and gasoline spills all over him. They later talk about how Bud’s favorite film is “White Chicks” (in which the Wayans brothers crossdress as white women). Meanwhile, Trina hijacks a police car in front of amused bystanders and flips off people on the highway as she pursues Chris and Bud.

The friends stop at a country-western bar where Chris tries to get Bud to relax and enjoy himself. Chris gets blackout drunk, prays for Bud to be more fun and to have incredible sex with Maria, and stumbled up to the roof of the bar. He tries to lead the bar in a toast but falls off (about 8 feet) into debris below. Concerned bar patrons try to help him. In return, he projectile vomits on them (with fake vomit).

As they cross into North Carolina, Chris begins fantasizing. In his daydream, he walks into a meeting that Maria is hosting (in front of real-life patrons) and the two simulate having sex in front of the crowd. He also imagines them beating up people at a farmer’s market and making out with the priest at their wedding in front of horrified guests.

While debating whether the premise of “White Chicks” could work in real life, the friends decide to go to a zoo. While there, Chris sneaks into the gorilla enclosure (with an actor dressed in a lifelike gorilla costume inside) to get a selfie with the beast (in hopes that the picture will impress Maria). In front of the horrified zoo-goers, the “gorilla” sexually assaults Chris multiple times. Later, they accidentally take drugs (that they think are mints) in Trina’s car. While “tripping,” they harass patrons at a grocery store. Trina meanwhile has humorous interactions with various bystanders she claims are friends with Chris and Bud.

When Chris and Bud awaken from their drug trip, they find themselves nude on a golf course with their penises stuck in either end of a Chinese Finger Trap. They run through the golf course and, later, the nearby city, asking people to help free them. They are even chased at one point by an outraged barbershop patron with a knife. The pair finally go to a Chinese restaurant where they cut the trap off in front of the patrons.

Now in Virginia, the pair stop at a small diner where an elderly waitress gives Chris advice on romance and sex. As they continue through Maryland, Chris gets “electrocuted’ when someone gives the car a jump start. In Pennsylvania, Bud gets diarrhea and gets stuck in a port-a-john.

Trina hands out fliers of Chris and Bud to patrons in a bar and says she will kill the pair once she finds them. After she leaves, Chris and Bud stop by the bar and are warned and mocked by the patrons. Trina returns just in time to see Bud and Chris driving off in a panic. Bud decides to go back to Florida. Chris insists they continue to New York and that Bud needs to stand up to his sister for once in his life. As the pair argue, they crash the car in a fiery explosion in front of shocked bystanders. Chris and Bud continue to argue as the bystanders try to intervene and deescalate the situation. The friends part ways, with Bud telling Chris he isn’t a real friend.

Chris sinks into depression and approaches people on the street that look somewhat like Bud. He goes to a military recruitment table and begs to be sent to the front lines so he can be killed. The recruiter consoles Chris and convinces him to find Bud and apologize. Chris does so, apologizing using grand gestures in front of a bus of delighted onlookers.

The friends, reunited, make their way to New York City. Chris finds Maria’s art gallery. Inside, Maria is explaining to the real-life patrons that the artwork is worth millions. Chris eventually convinces the security guard to let him in so he can profess his love. In front of the gallery patrons, Chris declares his love to Maria. Though flattered, she rejects him as she notes that they don’t even know each other (beyond being acquaintances). Scaring everyone, Trina suddenly drives her vehicle through the wall of the gallery. She attacks Chris and the pair destroy the artworks in front of the horrified patrons. Trina then chases Chris out of the gallery.

Trina pursues Chris to the top of a building overlooking a food truck. She hangs Chris over the side of the building and threatens to drop him. The bystanders plead with Trina not to kill him. Before Trina can drop Chris, Bud appears and she drags Chris back onto the roof. Trina threatens Bud, but he doesn’t back down. Trina embraces her brother, happy that he is finally standing up for himself. Trina punches Bud in the face and says they are now even. Chris returns to the art gallery to apologize, but Maria angrily chases him off in front of the cleaning crew.

To thank Bud for his friendship, Chris and Bud cross-dress as white women and infiltrate a party with wealthy party-goers. There, they see Trina who also is cross-dressing as a white man in order to avoid any police who may be looking for her. In front of the crowd, Chris and Bud dance to DMX’s “Up in Here” as Trina DJs. During the credits, we see alternate takes of the bits and bystanders’ reactions when they realize the situations were part of a movie.

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Chris makes it to New York and proposes to Maria. She rejects him, in large part because he caused her art exhibition to be destroyed. That said, the journey helps to solidify Chris' friendship with Bud.

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Eric Andre Couldn’t Have Made  Bad Trip  Without Meg Ryan

Eric Andre’s prank movie Bad Trip is out on Netflix today, and it’s possibly the funniest film to come out since quarantine began (okay, second funniest, after the “Imagine” video). In the movie, Andre skewers rom-com tropes, Lil Rel Howery just about quits, and Tiffany Haddish gives the bravest performance this side of Maria Bakalova for pulling stunts on strangers in open-carry states. Under all the fake vomit and gorilla jizz, though, lies a sweet message about how people are fundamentally good, kind, and patient, even when you’re pulling stunts on them. Vulture spoke with Andre about how the mechanics of a large-scale prank movie even work (answer: a lot of free food), the scene with Chris Rock that had to be cut (too famous), and why he owes it all to Meg Ryan.

We’re doing this interview a couple of days after the Oscar nominations for Borat , another prank-based narrative film that’s received praise for the “bravery” of its performers, Sacha Baron Cohen and Maria Bakalova. Bad Trip is that level of bravery compounded tenfold. Because on top of pulling these stunts in the American South, you’re doing them with police officers, with army men. You’re performers of color, and you don’t have the shroud of presenting as celebrities. Were there times you thought you were going to die? Many times. I would say that Maria Bakalova is brave. Sacha is incredibly brave, but she had never done prank movies. So shout-out to the both of them. They deserve all the accolades they’re getting, and then some. What they did was no small feat. But yes. Rel, our first day of shooting — and the first time Rel had ever filmed a hidden-camera prank in his life — we had a knife pulled on us because we went into a hood barbershop with our penises stuck in a Chinese finger trap, and we asked the guy for scissors. He looked for his gun, found his knife, chased us out with a knife, and that was the first time Rel had shot a hidden-camera prank. He almost quit the movie. So that was incredibly stressful.

But because of that, he was so verklempt that he called his manager and agent, and he was like, “Eric’s gonna get me killed. It’s a nightmare, I shouldn’t have done this. I should quit.” And then he called Tiffany Haddish, who wasn’t in the movie yet. He just called her to vent to her. He was like, “I’m doing this Eric Andre movie. It’s very stressful; this guy pulled a knife on us. I don’t want to do this anymore.” She starts dying laughing. They finish the phone call. She calls me five minutes later and she goes, “Dude, you almost got Rel killed doing pranks?” I go, “Yeah, I kind of want to keep that hush-hush.” Then she goes, “Hell no, that’s awesome. I live for that shit. I want to be in your movie.” I was like, What?! And just by the grace of God, the woman that was supposed to play her role had just dropped out because she had a prior obligation to her television show, so there was an opening. Tiffany presented herself as an option, and she was incredible in the movie. So it was definitely stressful and hairy, and got pretty violent. We were shooting in open-carry states, where people were armed. It’s hard.

I want to talk about the gorilla scene at the zoo. How do you orchestrate a prank like that, how many times do you shoot it, and how do you know, this is the take we’re using ? I think we only did the gorilla prank two times, and the majority of the footage was the first group. They were so on the hook that it was tough to beat. We’ll go on Craigslist and say, “Hey, we’re opening a new zoo and we need people to check out this zoo for the first time. We’ll give you free pizza at the end of the day,” and you’ll get 40 people to show up, and you just put them in little tour groups. And then I just “happen” to make my way into the gorilla cage in front of them. Craigslist was a great tool for us. Like “Free Taco Truck!” and then Tiffany hangs me off a roof.

So the taco truck is a plant? We hired a taco truck, and we paid the taco people however much to just give free tacos to anybody that walks up. We put a big sign out, like “Free Tacos.” And then by the time 15, 20 people are wolfing down tacos, then Tiffany chucks me off a roof in front of them. You’ll see a lot of free food or food-adjacent things off in the peripheral in the movie. It’s just a way to corral people into the proper location so that we can pull our pranks.

There was the doughnut shop … There were a lot of free doughnuts at that doughnut shop that day.

This is all making me realize I’m the sort of person who would totally be a mark for a prank movie, because I never say no to free food. Most people don’t!

Do you tell the people, say, working the taco truck or the doughnut shop, to react in a certain way in advance of pulling the prank, so that they “sell” what’s happening to everyone else? Oh yeah. All the reactions in the movie are genuine. And anybody that had to be “in on the prank” for any production purpose was out of frame. You’ll literally see a guy working at a bar, and his head’s cut off, and that’s on purpose. But honestly, the people don’t have to work hard. All eyes are on me, or Tiffany, or Rel, because I’m screaming at the top of my lungs about to be dropped off a building.

Are there any stunts or pranks you wanted to do that were just impossible? Most ideas I have are impossible — either too expensive or dangerous or illegal.

Any examples? It’s a bummer. We had Chris Rock do a prank in the movie. We were trying to corral people into the car, and we were going to shoot it in a way where it looked like they were hitchhiking, and we just picked up a hitchhiker. We were going on Craigslist, and we had some elaborate ruse that made no sense, like “We’re in town visiting and we want somebody to take us around.” But we looked really suspicious, me and Rel in that car in like a Burger King parking lot trying to corral people inside.

We got one guy inside the car, and immediately he could tell we were fishy. We had Chris Rock pretend he was a cop and he pulled us over, and he was going to get the guy out of the car and be like, “Drop and give me 20!” and plant drugs on him and light the guy up and freak him out. But the guy recognized Chris Rock. Chris Rock is super famous! So it just didn’t work, and we couldn’t get people in the car, and the prank failed. It was so frustrating, because we had my comedy hero in the movie, and we had to cut him out because the prank fell apart — not because of him or his performance. That kind of stuff happens all the time. It’s almost so common that I’m numb to it a little bit. You have a 20 percent chance when you go out and film a prank that it works.

This is the last Borat -based question I’m going to ask … Oh no, ask away!

Okay, 100 Borat -based questions then. That’s the name of the segment.

The ultimate M.O. of the Borat movies is exposing the ignorance, or stupidity, or hypocrisy of so many average people. What’s refreshing, generous, and ultimately very sweet about Bad Trip is that you expose how people are ultimately decent, compassionate, and deeply concerned about your safety … Yes! I think that this movie pulled off the greatest magic trick: We were a prank movie and we weren’t cynical. We show the Good Samaritan nature of people, and the humanitarian nature.

This is a great story: We showed Sacha Baron Cohen a very early cut of the movie. It was kind of in shambles, and he was helping us piece broken parts together. And he turned to me, and he goes, “You know, my movies show how shitty rich, white people are. Your movie shows how beautiful and sweet and genuine Black and working-class people are.” I think that’s the major difference. So even the king of rock and roll himself pointed out the very same point you made. He’s there to take down Mike Pence and all of the people orbiting around Trump, whereas my movie showed the humanitarian nature of the proletariat.

Did you always know you were going to end the movie with the credits sequence of clips where you, Rel, and Tiffany reveal yourself to the real people in the scenes? We were taking off from what Jeff [Tremaine, Bad Trip producer] did with Bad Grandpa and the Jackass movies, where their credit reel is some of the best material, because they get to put in quick little pops of chaos or things that failed. So for us, it was extra important, because it showed us revealing it was a hidden-camera prank to all these people, and them being good sports about it. It felt like this great release of tension. I strongly encourage people not to change the channel and watch through the credits, because it’s the true grand-finale dismount of the movie.

If Bad Trip is a satire, it’s satirizing how if people acted the way that lead characters act in movies — like that declaration of love — but in real life, it would look insane to everyone surrounding them. What movies did you watch, besides prank movies and White Chicks , to get into that headspace? We watched a ton of rom-coms. For the bus scene, we were inspired by When Harry Met Sally. We were watching Love Actually, and Meg Ryan movies from the ’90s, thinking, What’s the prank version of the breakup and makeup scenes that happen at the end of all of these movies? And then we wrote the hidden-camera version of that. Shout-out to Meg Ryan.

So much of the humor of The Eric Andre Show is postproduction based. How did you write the pranks in Bad Trip , knowing that you wouldn’t have that element? Story has to be the foundation of every single movie, even documentaries. Eric Andre Show benefits from only having to be an 11 and a half minute run time. You’re with each episode for such a quick burst that it’s kind of like anarchy. I was very resistant to a lot of story because it’s very confining, coming from Adult Swim where I have total creative carte blanche and I don’t have to play by any rules. The rules of storytelling felt like a straitjacket at first, and then you realize their importance. You realize the pranks that are on story are actually the most satisfying to pull off.

Do you have a different mind-set when you’re pulling a stunt on a celebrity versus average folks? Yeah, my adrenaline is surging. I’m nervous and out of body. It’s intense. I’m in a heightened state of reality.

Were there moments when people recognized Tiffany? We all got busted here and there, but it wasn’t too bad. Tiffany was the most disguised. She had the face tattoos and cornrows, and she was dressed like a construction worker. Every once in a while you get busted, but you wait it out for the person that’s calling you out to leave, and then resume the prank. My demographic skews young, so I knew that anybody over the age of 45, anybody that looked like a mom or older, they weren’t going to recognize me. Not a mom on Earth knows I exist.

Do you see yourself writing a more traditionally scripted, non-prank movie, after Bad Trip ?  Yeah, absolutely. I have no loyalty to any particular medium. Music videos, prank phone calls, fine art … I want to build the world’s biggest hamster cage at the Guggenheim. That’s been a dream of mine. Don’t tell anybody.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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What Eric André Really Thinks About Working With Tiffany Haddish On Bad Trip - Exclusive

A full year after its planned debut at South by Southwest was canceled due to a certain burgeoning pandemic, Eric André's buddy comedy and prank movie Bad Trip is finally getting released on Netflix. Among the many hapless targets you'll see in the hidden camera scenes, only four cast members in the entire movie are listed as actors: André, Lil Rel Howery, Michaela Conlin, and shining comedy star Tiffany Haddish.

Haddish plays Trina, an escaped convict and the psychopathic sister of Bud (Lil Rel) who spends the movie chasing him and Chris (André) down after they steal her car. There's a lot of menace to Trina — an unnaturally strong woman who is powerful enough to rip the door off a car — but in typical Haddish fashion, she's also drop dead hysterical. "That's my cup of tea," André told Looper in an exclusive interview, "terror mixed with comedy." He also gave us insight into her particular skills and what she's like on set.

"Comedy on a cellular level"

When asked about Haddish, André has nothing but glowing praise. "She is comedy on a cellular level. There's a reason she's a movie star. Every medium of comedy, she does 110 percent — stand up, hidden camera pranks, comedic acting." Recounting a conversation he had on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert the night before, André said of Haddish, "She could be a synchronized swimmer in the Olympics and make it the most comedic experience you've witnessed. You know what I mean? So, she's a god."

What was she like when the cameras weren't rolling? Just as good and just as hilarious. "She's so funny. She's meant to be a comedian ... She has the perfect job for her. She just won a Grammy, too ." He also brought up how remarkable that is, given that Haddish used to sleep in her car . "So she deserves all the success she's getting. I'm very proud of her."

Bad Trip debuts on Netflix on March 26. Stay tuned to Looper for more exclusive coverage.

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Film / Bad Trip

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Bad Trip is a 2021 Buddy Picture comedy film heavily influenced by Dumb and Dumber and Borat , directed by Kitao Sakurai and starring Eric André , Lil Rel Howery , Tiffany Haddish , and Michaela Conlin .

In pursuit of his high school crush Maria (Conlin), Chris (Andre) takes his best friend Bud (Howery) on a road trip from their small Florida town to New York City in Bud's felon sister Trina (Haddish)'s car. However, Trina has just escaped from jail and pursues them all the way in revenge for taking her car.

In addition to the plot, the film is also a hidden camera show , with extras being unaware that they were shooting for a film and finding out afterwards.

This film provides examples of:

• Chris accidentally sticks his hand in a blender similar to a prank done on The Eric Andre Show .
• There is also a scene where an art gallery is destroyed and Andre’s character drinks window cleaner, just like two other pranks on the show.
• He also tries to get enlisted in the army by asking the recruiting soldier if he could suck his dick.
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other : When Bud stands up to Trina at the end, she gives him a hug and tells him that she's proud of him for showing some balls.
• Because You Were Nice to Me : Why Chris is enamored with Maria; he was bullied in school and she was the only one who defended him.
• Bestiality Is Depraved : When Chris tries to get a selfie with a gorilla (obviously a guy in a suit), the gorilla sexually assaults him in multiple ways in front of a crowd of horrified onlookers.
• Beware the Nice Ones : Maria is surprisingly chill when Chris comes over in her art gallery and professes his love to her, but after Trina crashes a stolen police car into her gallery and starts to destroy everything while trying to beat up Chris, she goes ballistic on Chris when he comes to say goodbye, yelling at him to get the fuck out .
• Big Applesauce : Chris and Bud’s destination, where Chris’ love interest, Maria Li, is hosting an art show.
• Big Bad : Bud's sister Trina is the closest thing the movie has to one, following Chris and Bud throughout their road trip and intending to beat the crap out of them for stealing her car.
• Big Sister Bully : Trina has bullied and intimidated Bud throughout his life, even robbing him at his own workplace - until he stands up to her at the end.

• Butt-Monkey : Chris and Bud; Chris undergoes several physical traumas throughout the movie, including cutting up his hand in a blender, falling on a decorative hut while drunk and vomiting everywhere, getting raped by a gorilla , and being dangled from a building by his shirt; this is mostly because he keeps doing impulsive and stupid shit. Bud is bullied by his thuggish sister, Trina, and keeps getting dragged into Chris’ bullshit because he’s too weak-willed to stand up for himself, at least until the near end of movie, where he calls out both of them.
• Candid Camera Prank : The movie is full of these, but unlike in Borat , the unsuspecting movie extras aren't the butt of the jokes, and most of them thought it was Actually Pretty Funny when they found out what was going on.
• Charles Atlas Superpower : Trina is freakishly strong, being able to rip off a car door and hang Chris off a building. According to Bud, she once fried a fish using the warmth of her hand.
• Covers Always Lie : One of the posters depicts Chris and Bud (in their work uniforms) sitting on top of a crashed Bad Bitch on fire in the middle of a country side happily eating ice cream. In the actual film, they crash in a street near Baltimore, bitterly break off their friendship, and only get ice cream after they reconciled and get to New York. Plus, they’re wearing their normal clothes throughout the trip.
• Dance Party Ending : When they crash a party in the Hamptons dressed as white people, Chris, Bud, and Trina make the DJ play, then dance to the DMX song “Party Up” as the credits roll.
• Despair Event Horizon : After accidentally crashing the Bad Bitch, Chris and Bud part ways and Chris, in a deep depression, tries to get enlisted in the army just so that he can get placed in the front lines and get killed.
• Did Not Get the Girl : The whole trip turns turns out to be for naught after Maria reveals that she isn’t interested in Chris, and then after Trina ruins her art show, she burns bridges with Chris out of rage .
• Did Not Think This Through : The reason why Chris keeps getting in trouble throughout the movie.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones : Trina, despite her bullying of Bud, reveals that it was partly done so that she could toughen him up. She also loved her deceased grandmother, who have gave her the Bad Bitch.
• Every Car Is a Pinto : Downplayed, but some flames burst out from the Bad Bitch after it crashes.
• Excuse Plot : Chris goes on a cross-country road trip to confess to the girl of his dreams, all while being pursued by Bud's psycho older sister. The plot basically exists entirely in service of the pranks.
• From Bad to Worse : When Chris finally meets Maria in New York, he professes his love for her only for her to reject him, since she barely knows him aside from limited interactions in high school. Then, she ends wanting nothing to do with him after his trip to meet her accidentally leads to Trina destroying her art gallery when she tries to kill Chris .
• Also, Chris is grabbed by the balls by Trina when she finds and tries to kill him.
• Identical Stranger : After a fight with Bud, Chris starts stopping guys that look like him, mistaking them for Bud.
• Meaningful Name : Bud's primary narrative role is to be Chris' loyal best friend; in other words, his bud.
• Mushroom Samba : Chris finds what he thinks are mints in the glovebox of the car, that turn out to be some kind of hallucinogen. A wild drug trip ensues that consists mostly of wild shenanigans in a supermarket, and ends with Chris and Bud getting their penises stuck in the Chinese finger trap. It Makes As Much Sense In Context .
• Naked People Are Funny : In the opening scene, Chris accidentally gets his coveralls sucked off by an industrial strength vacuum cleaner.
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• Pet the Dog : Chris helps an old woman putting groceries in her car while running late for work.
• Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure : Chris and Bud fight with each other after Chris crashes Trina’s car when Bud finds out that Trina is going after them and Chris tries to stop him by grabbing onto the wheel.
• The Precious, Precious Car : The Bad Bitch, Trina’s customized, pink Ford Crown Victoria that was a gift from her grandma. Unfortunately for her (as well as Bud and Chris), it gets wrecked when Chris tries to stop the car when Bud tries to back out of the trip.
• Road Trip Plot : Chris and Bud are road tripping from Florida to New York to visit Chris' high school crush.
• While driving, Chris has an Imagine Spot about Maria that is very similar to Lloyd's fantasy about Mary. It even ends with him almost hitting a semi head-on. All that's missing is "I Love the Flower Girl" by The Cowsills.
• After a major setback, Chris and Bud have a falling out and Bud decides to go home, only for Chris to catch up to him and reconcile.
• The movie ends with Chris, Bud, and Trina at the Hamptons Disguised in Drag (and whiteface) in an outright stated shout-out to White Chicks .
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here : After hearing that Trina is looking for them, Bud attempts to go back home, only for Chris to grab the wheel— and crash into two cars and flip over.
• So Proud of You : When Bud stands up to Trina when she tries to drop Chris off a building, she’s so proud that she hugs and (mostly) forgives him for wrecking her car.
• Tempting Fate : When trying to convince Bud to use his sister’s car to help Chris see Maria, Chris brings up that Trina’s in jail and that she’s never getting out. Cue a scene where Trina escapes prison by hiding under a bus.
• Time Skip : The opening is set one year before the events of the movie. In it, Chris tries to talk to Maria who happened to stop by at the auto detailing place where he worked, only to miss his chance due to an accident with a vacuum cleaner stripping him naked, forcing him to hide. The prologue also reveals how Trina got arrested, which is because she robbed Bud’s workplace and took off her house arrest tracker.
• Underside Ride : How Trina escaped prison.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend : In his dream of dating Maria, Chris imagines that another man flirts with her on a date, and she beats the shit out of him, clearly turned on at the spectacle.
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‘Bad Trip’ Review: Eric Andre’s Raunchy, Riotous Prank Terrorizes America

A shock-and-awe prank film that transplants rom-com hijinks into reality.

By Amy Nicholson

Amy Nicholson

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It’s a romantic comedy cliché: Boy goes on outrageous quest to win back the girl of his dreams, an adventure fueled by derring-do and impassioned speeches that gain urgency as the violins swell. Onscreen, those manic you-complete-me moments make audiences swoon. But in reality, they’d look like “Bad Trip,” a squirm-worthy exercise in vicarious humiliation that welds the rom-com formula to a gross-out prank show. Directed by Kitao Sakurai and produced by “Jackass” co-creator Jeff Tremaine, “Bad Trip” hands lovelorn loser Chris ( Eric Andre , who co-wrote the film with Sakurai and Dan Curry) a safe word (“popcorn”) and the keys to a hot pink Crown Victoria, and sets the comedian loose to terrorize unsuspecting bystanders along a northbound interstate from Florida to Manhattan, where he intends to profess his love to his middle school crush Maria (Michaela Conlin of “Bones”).

Riding shotgun is Lil Rey Howery as Chris’ best friend Bud, and on their trail storms a terrifyingly incognito Tiffany Haddish , tatted and volatile, posing as Bud’s older sister Trina, a sociopathic prison escapee who barges into restaurants brandishing Chris and Bud’s picture and convinces strangers they might have to testify in a murder trial. Will these good citizens rat out Andre’s besotted Chris, who drips pathos like a leaking hose, and the charmingly sincere Howery? Alas, the average civilian lacks the courage of a movie hero. Groans one man, “I wasn’t ready to be Samuel L. Jackson in ‘The Negotiator.’”

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The result is sniggering slapstick that’s two-parts biological fluids and one-part salute to the innate empathy of mankind, often in the same scene. Take the zoo tour where Chris attempts to impress Maria by sneaking into the cage of an amorous gorilla for a selfie. The scene quickly becomes repellant for reasons better left to the imagination. Yet his fellow tourists’ concern adds a dash of sugar, even if their advice is merely untested hunches (“Don’t look him in the eye!”) or relationship insights (“Would she go out there for you?”) that could wait until Chris has pulled up his pants. Not everyone is so kind. When Andre and Howery barge into a barbershop with their unmentionables conjoined in a Chinese finger trap, a knife-wielding man chases them down the street. (Afterwards, Howery nearly quit.)

“Bad Trip” is an extension of Andre and Sakurai’s eight-year creative partnership on Adult Swim’s “The Eric Andre Show,” five seasons of aggressive performance art disguised as a talk show. Andre disables the part of his amygdala that restrains him from holding strangers’ babies until they cry or unnerving guests with cockroaches and jump scares. The goal of his stunts isn’t to make his patsies angry. It’s to make them feel as though reality has cracked open under their feet, to tectonically upend normal codes of behavior so that even the audience is unsettled by their own laughter. Is it funny when Haddish pretends to break out of a police van and pressures a witness to lie to the cops? Yes and no. But while it’s possible to have empathy for an individual, in the aggregate, the movie’s marks become hilarious carnage.

Sakurai’s favorite hidden camera closeups aren’t of people snarling in anger (though there’s plenty of that). It’s of someone slack-jawed that they’d entered someplace benign — a juice bar, a car wash, a grocery store — only to suddenly bear witness to Andre’s extreme joy or shame. His Chris suffers the emotional equivalent of Johnny Knoxville shooting himself out of a cannon. When Chris asks a random guy on a bench if he should surprise Maria in New York, the man advises him to go for it. When Chris leaps up and starts to sing, the now-invested stranger grins, “He’s in love!” But when Chris jazz-dances into a mall food court, a shopper kicks in panic. Someone that happy has got to be dangerous.

However, Andre’s social experiments prove that the majority of Americans truly want to be helpful. This makes the film oddly heartening, whether from an Army recruitment officer who gives Chris a needed boost, or from a diner waitress who edits the sex out of a draft of Chris’ climactic profession of love. “Be more romantic,” she advises. How long? At least “30 minutes to an hour.” As the end credits roll, “Bad Trip” plays a montage of people learning they’ve been pranked, which eases the psychic damage. That the pranksters are the most imperiled by their hoaxes offers a bruising absolution. Still, as Haddish barges up to a policeman to ask him for a kiss, it’s hard not to pray: It’s only a movie, it’s only a movie.

Reviewed online, Los Angeles, March 24, 2021. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 84 MIN.

• Production: A Netflix release of an Orion Pictures production. Producers: Jeff Tremaine, Eric Andre, David Bernard, Ruben Fleischer. Co-producers: Dan Curry, Kevin Costello. Executive producers: Aaron L. Gilbert, Shanna Zablow Newton, Jason Cloth.
• Crew: Director: Kitao Sakurai. Screenplay: Sakurai, Eric Andre, Dan Curry. Camera: Andrew Laboy. Editors: Sascha Stanton Craven, Matthew Kosinski, Caleb Swyers. Music: Ludwig Göransson, Joseph Shirley.
• With: Eric Andre, Lil Rel Howery, Tiffany Haddish, Michaela Conlin.

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Eric André brings his pranks to the movies with the funny, warmhearted Bad Trip

In the specialized subgenre of movies blending fictional characters with hidden-camera pranks and stunts in the style of reality TV, the narrative framework connecting all those trailer-moment set pieces tends to be as rickety as comic conventions will allow. Even an immersive master of the form like Sacha Baron Cohen tends to tie his material together loosely, obviously preferring to expend his efforts on the logistical challenges of his biggest stunts. It makes sense not to sacrifice those buzzy moments for the sake of storytelling conventions. After all, is anyone’s favorite Jackass production Bad Grandpa ?

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The similarly titled Bad Trip , a showcase for comedian and Adult Swim fixture Eric André, isn’t exactly a miracle of intricate storytelling. But it does a surprisingly credible job replicating the arc of a studio buddy comedy, perhaps because its characters aren’t outsized, Borat-level personalities: Chris (André) is the impulsive and possibly deluded bumbler, while best friend Bud (Lil Rel Howery) is the meeker, more cautious sidekick, cowed by his freakishly strong sister, Trina (Tiffany Haddish). When Chris has a chance meeting with his long-ago high school crush Maria (Michaela Conlin), he takes her polite invitation to look up her gallery in New York as reason enough to drive from his dead-end Florida town to the Big Apple. This involves Chris and Bud borrowing a bright pink car belonging to the incarcerated Trina—who promptly breaks out of prison, steals a cop car, and pursues the boys up I-95.

That André and his behind-the-scenes collaborators (many ported over from his self-titled Cartoon Network series ) make this stuff feel kinda-sorta like a “real” movie might sound like a dubious achievement—finally, an anarchic prank comedy that hits a bunch of screenwriting-manual beats! Yet Bad Trip ’s collection of go-to comic sequences—the accidental drug-ingestion scene, the large-scale slapstick, the boundary-pushing gross-out raunch—feeds into a larger meta-stunt. It’s funny to see André stumble through a night of overindulgence at a Georgia bar. It’s funnier to marvel at how director and co-writer Kitao Sakurai choreographs pratfalls and vomit streams in real environments, integrating real-life reaction shots and forcing improvisations. The labored artifice of mismatched buddies, road trips, and regularly timed set pieces becomes part of the joke.

Bad Trip may be winking at its own contrivances, but André and Howery are firmly committed to the task at hand, which involves being ridiculous enough to draw eyeballs without going too big, too soon (and also participating in an ongoing discussion about the real-world viability of the movie White Chicks —another meta-commentary about whether certain comic conceits would pass muster in the real world). Haddish is even bolder, sharing confrontational scenes with folks more likely to recognize her, the bona fide movie star in the cast. (In a hilarious touch, one poor guy meets up with both of the movie’s story threads, in seemingly different locations, interrogated by Haddish about the whereabouts of her quarry.)

There’s something sweetly generous, too, about the way these comic pros sometimes shift focus to non-actor supporting players without humiliating them. Bad Trip isn’t out to expose a seedy underbelly of the American road trip; though there are inevitably plenty of bystanders who film or gawk at potentially dangerous antics rather than assisting our hapless heroes, a few people in any given scene will emerge to offer help, advice, or good-natured commentary. This makes some of the pranks downright gentle, like an early moment where André seeks absurd romantic counsel from a friendly old-timer on a public bench. The warm feelings accumulate with the laughs. As the movie goes on, there’s also a subtle repositioning of “real America” optics, in that so many of the regular-folks faces belong to Black Americans. As if to counteract the bummer of watching a raucous comedy on Netflix rather than in a theatrical setting, Bad Trip comes equipped with its own crowd energy—a collective faith that there’s no idiotic stunt that can’t be pulled back from the brink of disaster.

Granted, that’s a lot of import to place on a movie where André simulates sexual violation with a man in a gorilla suit. Bad Trip isn’t quite as eye-opening as the best and most genuinely dangerous Borat stuff. Sometimes, the gags are fully secondhand—an impossibly stretchy prosthetic anatomy out of Bad Grandpa here, a singalong to the Golden Girls theme song there. And like nearly every prank comedy ever made, its rhythms get more predictable as it goes along. But it’s still remarkable how the filmmakers are able to shake off both the sourness and the strain of so many mainstream comedies, despite a production that must have been a genuine strain to actually coordinate . The scripted bits of Bad Trip purport to emphasize the healing power of friendship, and aren’t necessarily that convincing. The reality, though, is oddly comforting.

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