Taking a look at 'The Trip'

On this week's episode of The Peorian on TV I have finally found the creative vehicle that combines my love for the literary, the culinary and the comedic. It's the film "The Trip" starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon.

In this pseudo-documentary subtitled “eat, drink and try not to kill each other” Coogan is asked by The Observer to tour some of Britain’s finest restaurants for a special segment in the magazine. He envisions it as the perfect getaway for himself and his beautiful girlfriend. But, when she has to back out due to work obligations, the only person left to accompany Steve is his best friend and source of eternal aggravation, Rob.

Now all that is simply a pretense to allow these two brilliant comedians to travel around Britain and drive each other mad with constant showdowns of competing impressions of actors like Al Pacino, Arnold Schwartzenegger, Sean Connery, Roger Moore and Liam Neeson, with perhaps the greatest being an incredible Michael Caine throwdown.

I also mentioned that literature was involved, aka the exciting part. During The Trip the duo make a stop off at Dove Cottage which was one of English poet William Wordsworth’s homes. Coogan is a big Wordsworth fan in real life and who isn’t?

The movie is available on DVD, DVD, BluRay, Blockflix and Netbusters, but to whet your appetite here are a few of my favorite clips from the film.

First, some random impressions, including some of the Michael Caine bits:

Steve and Rob do Woody:

The Great Michael Caine-off (1.7 million views can't be wrong!):

"Is this man bothering you?" Rob shows off his "Small Man in a Box" (that's not a euphemism):

Steve gets stuck in a metaphor, i.e. falls into the water:

Rob recites Wordsworth and annoys Steve:

About the Author

A Juilliard-trained writer, Kevin Kizer has fought against numerous world-champion writers during his career, besting the reigning middle weight writing champion in an exhibition bout in Helsinki in 1976. He also played a crucial role on the U.S. gold-medal winning writing team during the 1984 Pan-Am games, where he came off the bench in dramatic fashion to write the winning prepositional phrase just as time expired.