Home > Chicago Movies > Movie Review > Movie review: 'College Road Trip'

1 1/2 stars (out of four)

I’m so not ravin’ about “College Road Trip,” which stars Martin Lawrence as a police chief eerily overprotective of his college-bound daughter, played by Raven-Symone. The dad-as-bodyguard premise is supposed to be funny and a little bit touching, but it comes off as malodorous. Not since Bob Crane put his dubious smirk to work in Disney’s “Superdad” a generation ago has this particular set-up seemed quite so hoary.

Raven-Symone is best known for the Disney series “That’s So Raven” and brings an arsenal of sitcom wiles to a feature film that may be rated G, but contains not one but two Taser-to-the-gut sight gags that really just don’t do the job in the “funny” department. The Porter family lives in upper-middle-class suburban comfort in (fictional) Fox Springs, Ill. Superdad wants his daughter to go to Northwestern so he can keep an eye on her; an opportunity arises at Georgetown University in Washington; Dad fumes while daughter Melanie plans an all-gal road trip east. But Superdad’s plans for a father/daughter road trip win out, albeit with two stowaways: Melanie’s little brother (Eshaya Draper) and his pet pig, who gets into all sorts of opportunities for poorly staged and edited mayhem.

Look, I know families have a low bar for this sort of diversion. When my kid’s interested in seeing a movie, all the parent part of me (as opposed to the critic part) wants is an hour and a half or so that won’t audibly rot his brain. By those low standards you could do worse than director Roger Kumble’s vehicle, which lurches from shrieking to hugs to squealing to more hugs to Donny Osmond in relentless, maniacal close-up as another father of a college-bound girl who meets up with the Porters. But not much lower. As generic as its title, “College Road Trip” feels like a first draft, the one the studio brings to the rewrite team that, in this case, never got hired.

mjphillips@tribune.com

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