This is one ride you’ll want to share.

Nobody cries on a coke bender quite like Ashley Park. It’s not just the comedic precision – though that’s razor-sharp – it’s the fact Joy Ride dares to let its characters spiral without neutering them for likability. Four women, deeply flawed, wildly funny, and unapologetically messy, zigzag through China on a search for belonging that’s mostly a cover for chaos, dick jokes, and more than one mortifying encounter with latex and lube. But here’s the turn: Joy Ride isn’t just a gross-out comedy with a passport. It’s a gonzo reclamation of the genre for women, for Asian women specifically, and it sure as shit isn’t hanging around waiting for permission.

From the moment Audrey (Park) embarks on her identity-affirming business trip-turned-trainwreck with childhood bestie Lolo (Sherry Cola), socially anxious tagalong Deadeye (Sabrina Wu), and Lolo’s unfiltered cousin Kat (Stephanie Hsu, doubling down on her Everything Everywhere credentials with giddy abandon), the film stakes out a raunchy, raucous space that’s been gatekept for too long by dick-swinging dudebros and manchild misadventures. Except Joy Ride isn’t playing defence. It doesn’t apologise for its horniness, doesn’t tidy up its emotional beats for mainstream comfort, and absolutely refuses to feign detachment from its cultural context.

What sets it apart isn’t just representation – though yes, seeing four Asian leads carry a mainstream American comedy without serving as sidekicks or dragon-lady punchlines is still depressingly rare – it’s the sheer confidence of and commitment to the film’s point of view. This is a story told from inside the experience, not filtered through a white friend’s reaction face or punctuated with explanatory subtitles. The humour swings between filthy, furious, and full of heart, because these women aren’t mascots for diversity. They’re a hot mess on their own terms.

Director Adele Lim, making the leap from screenwriting (Crazy Rich Asians, Raya and the Last Dragon) to the director’s chair, comes out swinging. The set pieces are outrageous – one particular sequence involving a K-pop identity swap and a spectacular tattoo reveal manages to be grotesque, hilarious, and oddly triumphant – but there’s purpose beneath the party. For all its brazen comedy, Joy Ride circles serious ground: transracial adoption, cultural alienation, female friendship after adolescence. But it never grinds the gears to shift tone. It lurches, yes – but with the energy of a film that knows exactly what it’s doing and doesn’t care if your sensibilities need a wet wipe after.

It helps that the cast are game for anything. Park brings nuance to what could have been a control-freak caricature, while Cola steamrollers her scenes with unhinged glee. Hsu, as ever, is a livewire – hyper-sexual, hyper-performative, but always with something teetering just under the surface. And Sabrina Wu quietly steals more scenes than expected, grounding the chaos with a socially awkward centre that somehow never feels forced. What Joy Ride achieves, perhaps most impressively, is a kind of tonal middle finger to the idea that raunch and representation are mutually exclusive. It’s a film that doesn’t flatten its leads into saints or symbols. Instead, it leans hard into their flaws, lets them be messy, horny, and culturally complicated – all while still being the funniest sex comedy in years. It’s not a trailblazer with a cause. It’s a filthy, chaotic, jet-lagged good time – and it just happens to be blazing a trail anyway.