movie the trip to greece

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The Trip to Greece

Actors Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan travel from Troy to Ithaca following in the footsteps of the Odysseus. Actors Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan travel from Troy to Ithaca following in the footsteps of the Odysseus. Actors Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan travel from Troy to Ithaca following in the footsteps of the Odysseus.

• Michael Winterbottom
• Steve Coogan
• Claire Keelan
• 68 User reviews
• 159 Critic reviews
• 69 Metascore
• 1 nomination

• Steve's Father
• (as Soraya Mahalia Hatner)
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• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Trivia The movie that Steve Coogan worked on with Kareem Alkabbani , which Steve couldn't remember, is Greed (2019) .
• Goofs Brydon talks about Hercules and asks, "Can you imagine Christianity forgiving someone who killed his wife and children?" The first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine the Great, killed his wife and eldest son and the Church made him a saint.

Rob Brydon : Legoland costs a fortune, but you get a lot for your money.

• Connections Edited from The Trip (2010)
• Soundtracks Jack Written and performed by Michael Nyman Published by Chester Music Ltd Licensed courtesy of MN Records Ltd

User reviews 68

• May 20, 2020
• How long is The Trip to Greece? Powered by Alexa
• May 20, 2020 (Australia)
• United Kingdom
• Viaje a Grecia
• Revolution Films
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• May 24, 2020

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• Runtime 1 hour 43 minutes

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The Trip to Greece

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The Trip to Greece sees this series subject to the laws of diminishing returns, but Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan remain reliably enjoying company.

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Michael Winterbottom

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You’ve already figured out whether or not you enjoy spending time with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon , I presume. The real-life friends, British comic actors (multi-hyphenates even, what with Coogan’s screenwriting credits at least) of long standing and considerable achievement, are now on their fourth “Trip” film and, sure, it is a gift for any fan of the prior three.

For those not in the know about the series, “Trip” doesn’t refer to psychedelics, although the notion of two British comedians making four films on chemical consciousness alteration sounds pretty ... well, dangerous frankly. So good thing it’s not. 2010’s “ The Trip ” was a deliberately modestly titled picture (cut down from a TV miniseries) in which Brydon and Coogan, on the pretext of having gotten a newspaper assignment (remember those?), did a tour of certain restaurants in the British countryside. As they sampled the best of a cuisine that’s often made sport of, the two blokes made sport of each other, trading acerbic barbs about their careers. But what made the movie viral were the impressions they traded. In particular a multi-valent competition involving Michael Caine as he sounds at various ages.

This was laugh-out-loud, endlessly re-playable stuff that overshadowed the meta aspects of the undertaking—that is, that Coogan and Brydon were fictionalizing themselves, exaggerating certain features of their personalities to make them more bristly for the sake of comedic/dramatic tension.

The success of the first outing led of course to “The Trip To Italy” in 2014 and “The Trip To Spain” in 2017. The impressions continued as the fictionalized back stories grew. Director Michael Winterbottom , as he demonstrated with Coogan in films like “ 24 Hour Party People ” and “Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story,” is a past master at such maneuvers, and of late, impelled to steer his comedies into more serious territory. So “The Trip To Greece,” while mostly very laugh out loud funny, is also more somber than the prior installments and also has, in Julian Barnes ’ phrase, the sense of an ending.

And for an ending why not go back to the beginning. Greece is, to Western culture, the birthplace of poetry, of storytelling, of philosophy, of comedy and drama. The movie opens with Brydon reciting some verse, and recollecting how Lord Byron’s proudest achievement was swimming the Hellespont strait, near where Ancient Troy was. This is a country for old, or at least aging men, and the setting puts the characters in a contemplative mood.

Steve more so than Rob. Back home in England, Steve’s father is gravely ill, which he doesn’t share with Brydon. So Brydon blithely regales his buddy with awful song-puns (“Greece is the word”) and good-naturedly needles him about the Laurel and Hardy biopic (" Stan & Ollie ") for which his performance garnered a BAFTA nomination.

But even Brydon succumbs to a stop-and-really-smell-the-roses feeling, impulsively asking his wife to join him on the last leg of the journey. The self-reflexive show business stuff has a different resonance here than in the prior pictures. When Coogan speaks with an agent and gets the bad news that he’s been turned down for a role in a Damien Chazelle project, the feeling isn’t “well that’s the way the cookie crumbles” so much as a nagging sadness concerning the character’s inability, or disinclination to, really live in the present moment. And while prior pictures have allowed the character to indulge in expensive fine dining without much thought to whatever’s happening outside their picturesque world, here there’s discussion of refugee camps and such.

None of this casts a pall over the proceedings, because the melancholy isn’t forced. When you reach a certain age you make a kind of deal with melancholy as a feature rather than a bug of everyday life. It would be foolhardy for the movie to pretend otherwise, as far as these fellows are concerned. But the fellows manage to seize the days anyway, and the food they eat—largely the riches of the sea—and the banter they exchange are rich and fulfilling. And the duo remains great company.

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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The Trip to Greece (2020)

Steve Coogan as Steve

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‘The Trip to Greece’: Film Review

Has it really been 10 years? The fourth 'Trip' film — and maybe the last — finds Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon retracing the path of Odysseus as they continue to eat, drink, and be quippy.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

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In the opening scene of “ The Trip to Greece ,” Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon , seated (of course!) at an idyllic outdoor table at a to-die-for Mediterranean restaurant, take note of the fact that they’ve been going on their culinary road trips together for close to 10 years. Even for those who have followed them through “The Trip,” “The Trip to Italy,” “The Trip to Spain,” and now “The Trip to Greece,” that news may come as a slightly sobering surprise — a sign of how quickly time passes, and of how a delicate and hilarious series of small-scale semi-improvised British comedies, if they stick around long enough, can become…what? An institution? A franchise?

Maybe something better. The “Trip” films, to those of us who wouldn’t dream of missing one (though we know they’re not so much finely cut gems as casual sketches tricked up into movies — that’s part of their frowsy charm), have become old friends, kind of like Richard Linklater’s “Before” films. Each one is a pared-down version of a six-episode BBC television series, and when you settle in to watch a new one, it’s to see which famous-actor impersonations Coogan and Brydon are going to try to top each other with this time (and also to take a vicarious foodie gawk at the succulent three-course lunches they’re eating). But it’s also to check up on the state of these two: to see how their mutual midlife crisis is going, and to see the latest chapter of their quibbling high-flown showbiz buddy romance, in which taking the piss out of each other, and doing it with the witty precision of verbal gladiators, is the only way they let themselves show what they feel.

I felt, for the first time, that the series was running a bit low on gas in “The Trip to Spain.” It was still a droll 90 minutes, but the impersonations were starting to seem like golden oldies (they didn’t have that comic shock), and the whole Coogan-and-Brydon-as-Don-Quixote-and-Sancho-Panza routine promised more than it gave. In that light, “The Trip to Greece” marks a spirited and convivial return to form, even if the film is lofty enough to present Coogan and Brydon’s six-day Grecian journey as a retracing of the path of Odysseus. (Both men are on their voyage through life, yada yada….)

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The two are now in their mid-fifties, and at one point they discuss how Coogan, with his silver-flecked hair, is aging marvelously (Brydon, after playing on Coogan’s conceitedness by comparing him to Richard Gere, declares, “I’m saying it: You look better older. You were unpalatable as a young man”). They then launch into a consideration of Coogan’s performance as Stan Laurel in “Stan & Ollie,” the 2018 Laurel and Hardy biopic, which Brydon manages to compliment and insult at the same time. This leads (of course!) to their impression of Stan Laurel and Tom Hardy, which is more chuckly than uproarious, since they already gave Hardy a full workout in “The Trip to Italy.”

A few scenes later, though, they settle into a dueling impersonation — no, a study — of Dustin Hoffman, mostly in “Marathon Man” and “Tootsie,” and what they do with his voice amounts to such a rip-roaringly funny deconstruction of the actor that it ranks right up there with the duo’s great riffs on Pacino. Coogan, especially, nails the petulant music of Hoffman’s so-nervous-it’s-stroboscopic whine. A sublime impersonation is a comic gift — it needs no justification. Yet the attitude, the drilling-down obsession , that Coogan and Brydon bring to their competitive voice mimicry places it somewhere between poetry and Freud. They’re actor-comedians who can hardly express a personal thought without irony, and who are never more themselves than when they’re channeling somebody else.

They’re also dueling egomaniacs: Coogan, with his rakish grin of self-absorption, a star who is never as revered as he wants to be, and Brydon, who tweaks Coogan’s vanity, and knows it, in a way that only someone who secretly identified with it could do. The fact that Coogan and Brydon are playing heightened versions of themselves is part of the ticklish joy of these films, which capture the playacting inherent in life. (Their personalities are quite literally a performance, and part of the joke is: Whose isn’t?) In “The Trip to Greece,” even as primal anxieties creep in (Brydon, calling home to London, wonders who his wife went to the theater with; Coogan learns that his father has fallen ill), these two never let their theatrical guard down.

The movie keeps serving up treats, and I don’t just mean the food (lamb chops in mint sauce! mussels smothered in pine needles!), as when the two have a go at doing Ray Winstone, in full-on cockney gangster mode, as Henry VIII. Coogan offers an impersonation of Mick Jagger in the hospital after his heart surgery (he’s done Mick before, but it remains a luscious sendup — winsome, pouty, putting on airs about not putting on airs), and this time Brydon accompanies him with a Keith Richards whose speech is gibberish and whose laugh is a death-rattle wheeze. They also, once again, sing pop songs in the car: Brydon does “Grease” (because they’re in Greece) and the Bee Gees’ “Tragedy” (because they’re in Greece — and because he seems fixated on Barry Gibb). And when the two compete to see who can do a better job of imitating Demis Roussos’ falsetto on “Forever and Ever” (“It’s not castrata ,” says Steve), you may bust a gut.

At the heart of each of their impersonations is the film’s real subject: their desire to entertain each other by topping each other — that is, the ping-pong of ego between two frenemies who have chosen different paths, but have more in common than they would ever dare to admit. “What would you say is the thing you’re the most proud of?” asks Brydon. Without missing a beat, Coogan says, “My seven BAFTAs.” Brydon: “For me, it would be my children.” Coogan: “Yeah, well, ’cause you haven’t got any BAFTAs.” Brydon: “Though you have got children, which is interesting.” There’s no winner in this duel, just different forms of the impossibility of having it all.

Coogan and Brydon, along with the series’ director, Michael Winterbottom, have suggested that “The Trip to Greece” may be the last outing for these two. But as much as I don’t think we need to see them pursue the same funny-wistful paces through one more cozy corner of Europe, I still think it’s too early for the series to end. How about “The Trip to Japan”? Or, as a grand finale, “The Trip to Hollywood”? It’s time to shake the “Trip” films out of their comfort zone and give these two a brave new world to imitate.

Reviewed online, May 16, 2020. MPAA Rating: Not rated. Running time: 103 MIN.

• Production: An IFC Films release of a Revolution Films Production, Baby Cow Films, Small Man production for SKY. Producers: Josh Hyams, Melissa Parmenter. Executive producers: Arianna Bocco, Paul Wiegard, Tristan Whalley.
• Crew: Director: Michael Winterbottom. Camera: James Clarke. Editor: Marc Richardson.
• With: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Claire Keelan, Rebecca Johnson, Marta Barrio, Tim Leach, Cordelia Bugeja, Justin Edwards, Tessa Walker, Richard Clews, Harry Taylor, Kareem Alkabbani, Soraya Mahalia Hatner.

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Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon continue their travelogue series with a visit to Greece.

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Movie Reviews

With 'trip to greece,' coogan and brydon's odyssey reaches a poignant end.

Justin Chang

Actor-comedians Steve Coogan (left) and Rob Brydon (right) play coyly fictionalized versions of themselves in The Trip to Greece. IFC Films hide caption

Actor-comedians Steve Coogan (left) and Rob Brydon (right) play coyly fictionalized versions of themselves in The Trip to Greece.

At a time when many of us are staying home, with no plans to travel farther than the nearest grocery store, watching The Trip to Greece might seem like either a lovely escape or an exquisite form of torture.

The movie — or rather the original six-episode TV series it was edited down from — was shot before the COVID-19 pandemic . And so much of what we see — tourists climbing aboard ferry boats and sharing meals in Michelin-starred restaurants — plays like a time capsule from a world that has temporarily ceased to exist. Viewer envy is par for the course with any good cinematic travelogue, but The Trip to Greece didn't just make me jealous; it left me feeling weirdly bereft.

I enjoyed the ride anyway, and you probably will too. If you've seen any of the earlier Trip movies, you'll know what to expect. The actor-comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, playing coyly fictionalized versions of themselves, have already wined and dined their way through England's Lake District , Italy and Spain .

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British comedian steve coogan's improv-based 'trip'.

This time they're starting in Turkey and making their way through Greece, spending six days retracing Odysseus' famous voyage home. As usual, one of them is filing freelance dining reviews for a newspaper, which explains the many stops at high-end eateries, where every amuse-bouche is as lovingly photographed as the scenery.

But if you come for the gorgeous food and landscapes, you stay for the quick-witted banter and the virtuoso celebrity impersonations. As usual, Coogan and Brydon live to perform, and their never-ending one-upsmanship is what makes them such enjoyable, if also exhausting, company.

Coogan, the BAFTA-winning actor from movies like Philomena and Stan & Ollie , is the bigger star of the two, and therefore the bigger target. Brydon, a saucy sidekick, clearly enjoys puncturing his friend's thin skin. At one point, he flatters Coogan by telling him he's starting to look like Richard Gere, then turns around and dings him for lapping up the compliment.

Still, 10 years have passed since the first Trip and both men, now in their 50s, are starting to mellow with age. They seem a bit more willing to enjoy each other's company and even laugh at each other's jokes.

Two Guys On A Road Trip, Racking Up Comic Mileage

I wasn't crazy about Coogan and Brydon's previous outing, The Trip to Spain. The comedy sometimes curdled into sourness and the actors' back-and-forth seemed to reach a dead end. But The Trip to Greece is an altogether pleasant return to form. The jokes are sharper and tighter, and those impersonations are especially first-rate. Sadly, neither man trots out Michael Caine this time around, though we do get Sean Connery, Mick Jagger and an especially inspired Dustin Hoffman .

Early on, Brydon fittingly quotes from Aristotle's Poetics : "Imitation comes naturally to human beings, and so does the universal pleasure in imitation." It isn't the only classic text that gets referenced here. After all, Coogan and Brydon are basically living their own version of The Odyssey , establishing a resonant metaphor about the journeys we take out into the world and the journeys that lead us back home.

British Comedians Take A 'Trip To Italy' And Make Fun Of Each Other

There's always been a glimmer of melancholy beneath the idyllic surface of these movies. We've seen these characters deal with setbacks in their careers and relationships, usually on the sidelines, in between sips of wine and bites of haute cuisine. Futility and disappointment are nothing new for them. But The Trip to Greece gets at something even more painful and direct: a sense of encroaching mortality.

Coogan's dad is in poor health, which may be why he's been having strange, troubling nightmares. Other real-world concerns undercut the blissful mood: On the island of Lesbos, Coogan runs into an actor he appeared with years ago and gives him a ride to the nearby refugee camp where he now works — a moment that throws their privileged existence into stark relief.

Friends Coogan And Brydon Take Their Dueling Impressions On A 'Trip To Spain'

Given the present state of the world, it's easy enough to sneer at that privilege . But The Trip to Greece doesn't scold our heroes for their extravagances, and it doesn't scold us for enjoying them vicariously. This is a movie that knows that pleasure can be a vital consolation in times of suffering, but it also knows that pleasure is often all too fleeting. Coogan and Brydon have said this will be their last Trip and, if so, they've found a perfect, poignant note on which to end. But personally, I hope we haven't seen the last of this squabbling, endearing duo — or heard the last of their Michael Caine.

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‘The Trip to Greece’ Review: Men of Twists, Turns and Familiar Jokes

In their final “Trip” movie, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon retrace Odysseus’ journey with laughs, vocal imitations and nonsense.

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By Manohla Dargis

The history of movies is also a history of armchair tourism, starting in the 19th century with the Lumière Brothers’ one-minute tours of the world. An obvious attraction of Michael Winterbottom’s four, rather lengthier “Trip” movies with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon is that they give you the opportunity to ooh and ahh at striking sites, much as you would on a cruise but without paying full freight and elbowing through hordes of strangers. At their best, the movies offer appealing virtual getaways.

It’s too bad then that “The Trip to Greece” never takes off. Like its predecessors, it hangs on the slimmest of premises: Coogan and Brydon journey to alluring destinations while trading quips, imitating the famous (Sean Connery, etc.), eating stylish chow and meta-riffing on their personas. Coogan is the self-serious performer with grand ambitions, or at least pretensions; Brydon is the somewhat more chill Everyman who goes for easy laughs. They’re competitive, which can be funny but can also be tedious, especially when their hunger for attention feels all consuming.

This journey begins on the archaeological site of Troy in northwestern Turkey with Brydon staring into the camera and, in a passable Richard Burton voice, reciting a snippet from “The Iliad.” Coogan isn’t impressed by the recitation; Brydon isn’t taken with the location. “There’s not a lot here,” he says, scanning the ruins as if looking for the nearest exit. It’s a promising nod at the reality of so much contemporary travel, which finds tourists dutifully shuffling from site to site. Acropolis, check. Temple of Athena at Delphi, check. Coogan and Brydon are shuffling too, just with concierge service.

Soon, the two are on the move, sniping and jesting and explaining the setup. The British newspaper The Observer is paying them to retrace the steps of Odysseus, so next stop: lunch! In a pretty spot in Greece, they teasingly yank each other’s chains, drop cultural references (James Joyce, Harry Potter), perfunctorily coo over the food (“lovely”) and turn to their favorite subject: themselves. As usual, Coogan’s ego gets stroked, bruised and soothed as they discuss whether he looks like Richard Gere (aah, no) and talk about his role as Stan in the movie “ Stan & Ollie .”

And so it goes as our heroes eat and joke, drive to the city of Assos, hop a boat to Lesbos and so on, as Monday gives way to Tuesday. To liven things up visually, Winterbottom throws in pretty-as-a-postcard shots, some captured with drones, natch, and adds some unconvincing narrative shadows, folding in a family illness for one of the men and a glance at the Syrian refugee crisis. It’s pleasantly innocuous at first riding shotgun with these two but I found myself progressively irritated by their lack of curiosity about the places they visit. The “Trip” movies have always been self-aware about their own weightlessness, wringing laughs by needling the men and their vanity. That’s as smart as it is convenient; this time, though, it also feels like a cop-out.

Some of my impatience has to do with the pandemic and my wistfulness about the places I’ve been and those I yearn to visit. And this movie, the final one in the series, just isn’t as funny as the others. The larger problem, though, is that by trying to give “The Trip to Greece” some heft, Winterbottom only draws attention to the series’ lack of interest in history, other people, the politics of global tourism and, well, the world. Coogan and Brydon have racked up a lot of miles but to watch them indifferently eat yet another generic haute cuisine meal in yet another interchangeable restaurant is to realize they never really left home, which might be the point but is also a bummer.

The Trip to Greece

Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. Rent or buy on Amazon,  iTunes and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.

Manohla Dargis has been the co-chief film critic since 2004. She started writing about movies professionally in 1987 while earning her M.A. in cinema studies at New York University, and her work has been anthologized in several books. More about Manohla Dargis

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