• Courtesy Of Ed Araquel/Lionsgate
• Four friends get in big trouble in China in Lim's buddy comedy that combines humor and heart.

By the time I caught up with the comedy Joy Ride this weekend, it had already been declared a bomb, yet another casualty of a box office climate in which would-be blockbusters no longer bust blocks and mid-budget movies languish.

Maybe the raunchy comedy genre is one that people prefer to wait and stream. Maybe Joy Ride's trailer is a little too frenetic to be enticing. But it's not often we see a Hollywood production with a Malaysian woman director (Adele Lim, writer of Crazy Rich Asians), Asian American women screenwriters (Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao), and an almost entirely Asian cast. I headed to the theater.

The deal

Audrey (Ashley Park) and Lolo (Sherry Cola) have been best friends since they met as the only two Asian kids on their Seattle playground. Now a high-powered lawyer, Audrey must seal a business deal in Beijing, where she's traveling for the first time since her white parents adopted her there as an infant.

For help in navigating Chinese culture, Audrey brings along Lolo, a slacker artist with expertise in Mandarin and in closing deals in the more amorous sense. Lolo's eccentric, K-pop-obsessed cousin, Deadeye (Sabrina Wu), joins them for the ride. In Beijing, the trio connects with Kat (Stephanie Hsu), Audrey's college friend, a Chinese TV star who is doing her best to hide her promiscuous past from her straitlaced fiancé.

Audrey's more culturally attuned friends guide her through socializing with businessman Chao (Ronny Chieng). But when he makes the deal's success contingent on her affirmation of her roots — through a reunion with her birth mother — the business trip transforms itself into a chaotic cross-country odyssey.

Will you like it?

Say what you will about the heyday of Judd Apatow comedies. The combination of gross-out humor, likably oddball characters and earnest sentiments made a lot of money because it worked. Joy Ride positions itself firmly in that tradition: Annie Mumolo, who cowrote Bridesmaids, plays Audrey's adoptive mom, while Apatow associates Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are among the film's producers.

The formula works here, too. Most of the film's first act serves simply to introduce the characters and give the actors opportunities to play off one another — and it's a blast.

Audrey and Lolo form a classic comedy odd couple — one uptight, the other free-wheeling — while the deadpan Deadeye adds a new flavor to the mix. Though Deadeye isn't as out there as Zach Galifianakis' Alan in The Hangover series, there's a certain similarity, as Wu likewise succeeds in creating a "weird" character with shadings and an inner life. We laugh with them, not at them. (Deadeye's coming out as nonbinary happens off-screen and is revealed only by a casual pronoun shift — a nice note of subtlety for this genre.)

Kat, the quartet's final and most gleefully outrageous member, might initially seem extraneous to the plot. But when she and the like-minded Lolo become rivals, competing for Audrey's attention, comic sparks fly. Hsu gives a deliciously unchained performance. Bratty and worldly by turns, all rolling hips and petulant moues, she makes the most absurd jokes feel plausible. (Let's just say a tattoo in an unlikely place is involved.)

The action and the gags get wilder as the film reaches its midpoint, like a roller coaster mounting its summit. The requisite outré set piece, involving a train ride and a drug dealer's load of cocaine, feels a bit tired (and tiring). But Lim follows this with a wittier sequence in which she crosscuts among the characters as each of them reaches a different, and personality-appropriate, form of "climax."

Even as the plot goes haywire, the characters' relationships evolve on humbler, more realistic tracks. Joy Ride pivots on friendship and doesn't exactly shy away from sex, yet, in a refreshing departure, only one character has a designated love interest. Rather than force their buddy film into a rom-com mold, the writers allow Audrey to discover new sides of herself by getting to know her mother country.

The script doesn't tiptoe around issues of cultural assimilation. Lolo, who has a loving extended family in China, ribs Audrey about how her upbringing has left her alienated from her heritage. Audrey's reconnection with her roots is her central character arc — one that brings Joy Ride to a surprisingly moving conclusion.

For all its indecent exposures, pratfalls and impromptu music videos, Joy Ride works for the same reason the Apatow oeuvre does: It keeps the characters at the center. No matter how wacky the plot gets, their reactions and relationships are the wellspring of the humor.

Joy Ride is a step forward for Asian American representation on screen, and that matters. But this thoroughly fun summer entertainment doesn't need any special pleading — it delivers plenty of joy.

If you like this, try...

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022; Showtime): If you liked Hsu's gonzo performance in Joy Ride, you'll like her equally gonzo Oscar-nominated supporting turn as Michelle Yeoh's resentful daughter in this year's Best Picture winner.

Fire Island (2022; Hulu, Showtime): Like Joy Ride, this ensemble comedy about a group of gay friends has Asian American creators and a mostly non-white cast. Its fresh, summery take on Pride and Prejudice is lots of fun.

The Farewell (2019; PLEX, Pluto TV, Redbox, Tubi, YouTube, Vudu, rentable): Awkwafina plays a young woman making a last visit to her ailing grandmother in Lulu Wang's more restrained vision of a Chinese American's return to the "mother country" — leavened with bittersweet humor.