Joy Ride | | Cast : | Leelee Sobieski | | Director : | John Dahl | | Studio : | Twentieth Century Fox Home Video | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | October 05, 2001 | | DVD Released Date : | March 12, 2002 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), French (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), English (Original Language), French (Original Language), Spanish (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 13, 2005 | | Summary | Dumb | Content
 | A pretty dumb teen horror flick that tries to capture Duel, but doesnt get that far. Sobieski, who's normally good, is just not that great here. Maybe it's the wrong vehicle for her. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 09, 2005 | | Summary | Was That A Peppermint Candy Cane? | Content
| Here's a heads up to all you silly kids out there: Long haul truckers who drive those massive Kenworths are not to be messed with--especially on the CB radio. The hours are long, the road monotonous, and some of these drivers get a little too puckered. But alas, brothers Lewis and Fuller (who named these characters?) fail to grasp this incontrovertible truth, so the stage is set for a road trip from Hades, a nonstop cat and mouse chase that makes JOY RIDE an entertaining, yet goofy, experience.
Having hooked up with his wacky brother, steady Lewis (Paul Walker) heads out, in a rundown old jalopy (was that an Impala?), to pick up a hot babe he has a crush on--a babe out of college for the summer, with all three of them destined for the east coast. But, problematic brother Fuller (Steve Zahn) decides it would be great fun for his sibling to play with some truckers on the CB radio. . .with Lewis pretending to be a female looking for love. Going on the air as "Candy Cane," Lewis instantly attracts a trucker who doesn't like to be the subject of any kind of prank. Once the trucker discovers that Candy Cane is a Dandy Shane, all sorts of awful stuff starts happening.
Thus, the chase commences, as the disgruntled semi driver stalks the two brothers relentlessly--even though his rig could do stuff on dirt roads and in cornfields that I never knew a double-tandem could ever begin to accomplish. But hey, I suppose motive always overcomes burying a ten-ton rig up to its twin axles in dirt. People come, people go, suspense unfolds, suspense ebbs, girls scream, police come, and we witness a very dramatic, exciting destruction of property. And then, predictably, the climax tells us this tale has yet to end. . .
Walker and Zahn are solid, if not noteworthy, in their roles, while Leelee Sobieski very aptly plays female-soon-to-be-victim Venna, a college coed who is on both brothers' babe radar. Ted Levine furnishes the eery voice of the scorned trucker, and he reminds me how Claude Akins might sound if the beloved character actor had had too many tequila shots. Be that as it may, JOY RIDE entertains as a "chase flick," as long as you ignore reality, the laws of gravity and physics, basic human interaction, and several other bothersome little quirks. But what the heck: with a CB radio, you've got the entire world on your doorstep.
--D. Mikels, Author, WALK-ON
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| Rating | | | Date | July 09, 2005 | | Summary | Suspenseful movie with few minor flaws. | Content
| So I just saw this on TV. Usually, I channel surf during the commercials but this movie was so suspensful that I actually stayed on the same channel waiting for it to come back. I wasn't expecting much for a movie with Paul Walker in it, but it was actually pretty good.
It's a basic plot with two brothers, Lewis (Paul Walker) and Fuller (Steve Zahn) driving around with Lewis' long time friend and crush, Venna (Leelee Sobieski). It starts off with Lewis calling Venna and then making plans to pick her up from college and drive home. Along the way, he picks up his recently out of jail brother, Fuller, and off they go.
Before reaching the college, they play a mean joke on an unsuspecting truck driver, who calls himself "Rusty Nails", mostly initiatied by Fuller, the more cruel of the two. So after a few close encounters with this psychotic truck driver, who remains unseen for most of the movie, they pick up Venna. The brothers are so close to death at one point that it seems kind of illogical that they don't run for help, but instead kind of blow it off as a mean joke. That's one of the few things about the movie that bothered me.
The real horror comes in a little later after they run into this crazy truck driver again and they realize just how much he doesn't like being made a fool out of. It's a crazy chase along the highway that's extrememly enthralling and it gave me a mini heart attack.
The final scenes at the motel end the movie nicely. You're dying to see what this truck driver looks like and what happens to Venna and the brothers.
Minor things that bothered me were the fact that this huge truck was able to follow them across the country unseen by them. Why don't they immediately call for help after the first time they run into this crazy guy? Why are they even still using that radio after the truck driver nearly kills the guy in the room next to them?! Oh yeah and Fuller was a little repulsive, first he gets them into the whole mess by suggesting the prank, then he tries to go after the girl his brother has a crush on, and then he picks up the radio just to egg the guy on even though it's pretty obvious that he shouldn't. But other than that, good movie =) |
| Rating | | | Date | May 02, 2005 | | Summary | 1.5 STARS: Started out well, but went south for the winter. | Content
| The movie "Joyride", while not a "TRUE" Horror movie, starts out quite well and creates an element of suspense, mystery and a certain degree or lowgrade level of terror from the beginning. However, as so many modern horror and thriller movies do, the movie fails to build on its early success and starts a steady decline that begins directly after the truck scene where the ice truck explodes and the 18 wheel truck nearly smashes our two little heroes into rubbish. But, here is where the movie goes bad as it as this point where the terror part begins to decline and the suspense/mystery begins to subside.
I thought the scene where the truck was chasing these kids in the cornfield was very stupid and unrealistic...a truck like that would have gotten stuck less than 30 seconds after entering such a field. Also, these kids were pretty stupid the way they were running through that field. Notwithstanding the unrealistic portrayal of an 18 wheeler driving through a field at 35-45 miles per hour, it would have been easy for these kids to outmaneuver such a vehicle on foot while in such a cornfield.
I think the voice of this mysterious truckdriver looking for "candy cane" is quite good in the beginning, but the villain loses prowess and credibility in the fantastic and unrealistic chase scene. The movie takes away from what could have been a scary villain by giving away too much of killer's psychological state. Sometimes, in a movie of this type, it's better to not explain so much about the killer's motives and nature...I just think that the movie revealed too much of the killer to be able to sustain the creepiness, suspense and terror that the movie started out with so well.
I thought the movie was boring after the girl was picked up. I liked the return of the CB scene but I thought it would have been scarier if there had a been a dead body in the trunk with it...that would have been more effective. I really disliked the way they did the ending scene at the hotel where the girl is wrapped up and a spring gun is set up to kill her...it could have been done much better although I think this is a weak setting to conclude the movie...it should have concluded on the highway as all great "Cat and Mouse" deadly chase games conclude such as "Duel" and "The Hitcher".
Certainly, the truck attempting to ram through the hotel itself is stupid and so unrealistic it doesn't evoke any sense of horror in a sophisticated horror movie audience. It's too bad this film went south so quickly because I liked the beginning...I thought the movie showed promise in the beginning, but the directing and the script in general failed to follow up on that early promise. I thought the acting and directing was average at best in this movie from beginning to end. I would recommend better deadly "cat and mouse" chase games on the highway to the viewer named Steven Spielberg's "Duel" and "The Hitcher" starring Rutger Hauer, which are clearly superior to "Joyride".
In both "Duel" and "The Hitcher", much of the mystery about the villain remained just that, a mystery, which made the movies scarier and more suspenseful. "Duel", in my opinion, is the best...it uses the simple plot to its advantage, doesn't reveal a motive or even tries to create a sensical villain and it works beautifully through the mind of the character played by Dennis Weaver and his psychological state of increasing fear and distress throughout the movie. "Joyride" fails to use what made these two superior films great to sustain that level of fear, suspense and mystery in the audience by basically trying to be too "cute" with unrealistic scenes and ultimately making the villain into something of an idiot or a joke by the movie's end.
The scenes following the first part just fail to build on its successful theme that it initially created and from stupid scene to stupid scene, the movie ends up losing its credibility and in essence killing any sense of horror, suspense or mystery the movie produced. By the end of the movie, I had lost interest to such an extent that I did not even care what the killer looked like. Basically, "Joyride" is a disappointing film that could have been much better with a better script, better acting and direction.
Overall, I characterize "Joyride" as a common thriller movie that starts out well, but fails towards the end. I can't really give it TWO stars because even though the movie was good in the beginning, I really thought that it was increasingly bad from scene to scene after that. I disagree with these glowing reviews which I believe reflect a hope that the movie was turn out as good as its beginning which is clearly not the case...rent it if you want to see for yourself but don't buy it or overexpect and maybe you won't be so disappointed by the time the movie concludes, provided that you can stand to watch the rubbish enough to actually sit throught the entire movie. This movie is a classic example of a good horror/thriller premise but the movie suffers due to poor story development...also, just because it's imaginitive doesn't mean it's good either.
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| Rating | | | Date | April 27, 2005 | | Summary | Oh Joy | Content
| I thought it was good. It's about this guy stalking these teens.It can really happen! You HAVE to see IT!!! |
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