College Road Trip is a 2008 American family comedy film directed by Roger Kumble and starring Martin Lawrence, Kym Whitley, Raven-Symoné, Brenda Song, Margo Harshman, and Donny Osmond. The film centers on college-bound teen Melanie Porter (Raven-Symoné), who goes on a road trip to different universities with her family, including her overprotective father. The film was released by Walt Disney Pictures in the United States on March 7, 2008. The film garnered negative reviews from critics.
Plot
Melanie Porter, a 17-year-old college-bound girl, is preparing to graduate from high school and wants to go to Georgetown University. However, her father James Porter, the chief of police in the quiet Chicago suburb where they live, is overprotective of his family, including Melanie, and is not ready for her to leave and study so far away from home. James has other plans for Melanie; he wants her to go to Northwestern University which is only 28 minutes away from home. James also disagrees with his real estate agent wife Michelle, the family pig Albert, who continuously annoys him, and his young son Trey, who spends much time with the pig. Melanie is invited to an interview at Georgetown after a college recruiter sees her performance at a mock trial. Her two best friends, Nancy and Katie, offer to take her on their road trip to Pittsburgh, Melanie is set to go with her friends until her father surprises her with his own road trip to Washington, D.C.
On their way, Melanie reluctantly visits Northwestern to take a tour. They meet an overly optimistic father and daughter duo, Doug and Wendy, who are on their own road trip. James has planted actors at Northwestern, one screaming at Melanie they lost an eye at Georgetown. Melanie almost falls for it until one of the actors says to her "Yeah, the chief's a pretty smart guy", since he never met James.
The Porters' car soon breaks down, and they find Trey in the trunk with Albert. They stop at a hotel (thanks to Albert's navigating), but Albert eats coffee beans and becomes hyperactive, leading to him crashing and ruining a wedding. They run into Doug and Wendy again, who offer James and Melanie a ride since James' car broke down. Later, Melanie and her father ride on a tour bus where they try to work out their differences. At one destination, Nancy and Katie show up and take Melanie to a sorority house. James, due to a misunderstanding, and the owner not letting him in to check on her, sneaks into the house. After hearing that his daughter has faith in him, he decides to leave the next morning. Unfortunately, after Melanie leaves, he gets caught, brutally tased, and arrested by the owner. James' mother comes to bail him out, scolds him for being overprotective, and opens up about her own past fears when her son went to the Army, but still believed in her son to go his own path. James and Melanie end up forgiving each other at the airport. After dropping off Trey, they skydive to make the interview at Georgetown.
Eventually, they land, but re-encounter the father of the bride at the crashed wedding, who starts chasing them in golf carts as revenge for ruining his daughter's wedding ceremony until they manage to lose him. Eventually, they succeed in making it to the interview at Georgetown just in the nick of time. However, Melanie starts to show fear, but James consoles her and encourages her to go in.
Later, Melanie is finally attending, with her parents sending her off, even meeting Doug and Wendy once again, where Wendy was being sent off to college as well.
At Thanksgiving, Melanie and Wendy return home to the Porters’ house for dinner, where the girls each introduce their friends, with James showing restrained anger at meeting Melanie's friend Tracy, who is a male. Wendy then introduces her friend Scooter, and reveals that they are getting married. Doug snaps in anger and tackles the boy, much to the shock of everyone else.
Cast
Martin Lawrence as Chief James Porter, an Army veteran and police chief of a small Illinois suburb. He is very overprotective of his family, but finally lets go of Melanie and allows her to live her life.
Raven-Symoné as Melanie Porter, James & Michelle's daughter and a very bright young girl with aspirations to get into Georgetown.
Donny Osmond as Doug Greenhut, an overly-energetic man who is taking his equally energetic daughter on a road trip. He stops to help James and Melanie when their car breaks down and initially freaks James out. However, in the end it is shown the families are friends as they are celebrating Thanksgiving together.
Brenda Song as Nancy Carter, one of Melanie's friends
Will Sasso as Deputy O'Mally, one of James' co-workers on the police force
Eshaya Draper as Trey Porter, James & Michelle's son and Melanie's younger brother. He is very intellectually gifted beyond his age. He stows away on the trip with the family pig, Albert.
Kym Whitley as Michelle Porter, James' wife and Melanie & Trey's mother
Lucas Grabeel as Scooter, a member of Melanie's graduating class and her intellectual rival. He behaves exactly like Doug and even gets engaged to his daughter in the end.
Molly Ephraim as Wendy Greenhut, an energetic and chipper young woman who is on a college tour with her father and ends up befriending the Porters. At the end of the film she is engaged to Scooter.
Cinco Paul and partner Ken Daurio wrote the most recent draft. The film was born out of the Disney Writers Program by Carrie Evans and Emi Mochizuki. The movie was produced by Andrew Gunn/Gunn Films and directed by Roger Kumble.[2]
The film did not receive a cinema release in Australia. Although promotions for the film aired on Disney Channel Australia, a confirmed date for the movie to begin screening in theatres was never given. The film was released direct-to-DVD instead.
Release
Critical reception
The review aggregator at Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 12% based on 74 reviews, with an average rating of 3.3/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Filled with shrill gags and middling slapstick, College Road Trip is woefully short on comic imagination."[3]Metacritic gave the film a weighted average score of 34 out of 100, based on 46 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".[4] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.[5]
The New York Times gathered positive reviews toward the leading cast's performance. 411 Mania gave it a final score of 7.5 out of 10 based on several reviews and managed to give it a positive DVD and film review.[6] The film also received positive reviews from Blu-ray.com,[7]Kansas City Star and several other publications[8] including the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The film also received negative reviews from USA Today and San Francisco Chronicle.
Box office
In its opening weekend, the film grossed approximately $13.6 million in 2,706 theaters in the United States and Canada, ranking #2 at the box office.[9] The movie continued on to gross $31,117,834 to finish off the month and closed with earnings above $45 million in domestic territories.[citation needed]
Home media
The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray on July 15, 2008. Both the DVD and BD releases contain the following bonus features.
College Road Trip sold 439,809 copies in the first week of release pulling in $8,030,648 of additional revenue for the franchise. It has sold a total of 1,004,834 copies since its release and made a total of $18,461,049 in DVD sales.
In May 2008, Disney Press released a book based on the movie[14] written by Alice Alfonsi. The novel has the printed original movie poster as the cover.
