Netflix’s Bad Trip is unapologetic in how juvenile it is, but it’s hard to stop laughing once you start.

Those who are familiar with The Eric Andre Show on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim know comedian Eric Andre loves the theater of the absurd. The line between scripted and improvised humor is blurred. Either people are in on the joke or they’re stuck in a perpetual state of bewildered amusement, waiting for the next mishap to happen. In a word, Andre’s essence is chaos.

Andre channels that chaotic comedic energy into Bad Trip, a movie full of gut-busting pranks edited together to loosely tell a simple story. A loser named Chris (Eric Andre) spots his high school crush Maria (Michaela Conlin) while he was washing cars in Florida. Shortly before his hand is caught in a blender at a job he takes following his presumably short car-washing stint, Chris catches up with Maria and learns she’s leaving town and returning to New York City where she runs an art gallery. Chris decides to go on an epic road trip with his best friend Bud (Lil Rey Howery), a computer shop employee, in a car previously driven by Bud’s sister Trina (Tiffany Haddish). Trina, who escaped from prison, learns her car was borrowed by Chris and Bud, and decides to track them down.

This movie makes Borat look like a Francis Ford Coppola drama. The pranks, each one uniquely and hilariously absurd – not to mention seemingly painful in execution – are shown at breakneck speed. The movie’s fast pacing works in Andre’s favor, yet the audience is left struggling to breathe from excess laughter. Those the prank set pieces are clearly inspired from shows like “Jackass” and “Candid Camera,” there is a level of awkward discomfort that Andre places his unwitting participants in that builds to a uproarious crescendo and a wickedly absurd climax. The audience is barely able to process what just happened as soon as they arrive at the next prank.

Some pranks shouldn’t work, but they do. Some pranks feel extremely illegal, but they’re not. Other pranks generate heightened tension among the audience, waiting on baited breath before they’re focused to cover their eyes and mouth. Oh my God! No! Watchers are guaranteed to have that reaction for a few wonderfully wild scenes.

In one scene in particular, Chris and Bud find themselves caught in a Chinese finger trap in the most humiliating way possible and they desperately search for a way to undo their mutually shared contraption. They stumble into a barber who chases them out of his barbershop with a knife. The barber, who was clearly not in on the joke, later revealed he forgot his gun at home and reached for his knife as soon as he saw Andre and Howery run in. This incident caused Howery to depart from shooting. Andre had to seduce him back. Howery ultimately became the invaluable linchpin for Bad Trip, allowing Andre to readily pivot from him at every opportunity.

Tiffany Haddish shines as Trina, a force of nature that is somehow more refined as a character than Chris or Bud. She wants her car back and she’ll do whatever it takes to achieve her goal. Haddish flashes a few well-crafted one-liners that keep the audience on their toes (“I like to drink Pepsi Bismol with a little Hennessy”). Haddish’s improvisations run as smoothly as scripted dialogue. One could argue Haddish’s presence in Bad Trip served as glue to keep the movie from falling apart. As luck would have it, after Howery vented to her about the barber incident, Haddish helped convince Howery to return to production and she approached Andre about appearing in the film.

Bad Trip relies heavily on good luck – whether that good luck came in the form of surprisingly well-executed takes or its stars coming together amidst the unplanned chaos to harness great chemistry.

Though the movie was shamelessly brainless, Bad Trip proves that hidden camera pranks remain a timeless and disgustingly amusing work of art.

Bad Trip is now streaming on Netflix

Bad Trip Netflix