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| College Road Trip | 
 enlarge | Director: Roger Kumble
Actors: Michael Landes, Martin Lawrence, Adam Le Fevre, Donny Osmond, Arnetia Walker
Studio: Walt Disney Video
Category: DVD
List Price: $29.99
Buy Used: $6.00
You Save: $23.99 (80%)
New (60) Used (45) Collectible (1) from $6.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  22 reviews
Sales Rank: 970
Format: Ac-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Dvd-video, Full Screen, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), French (Dubbed)
Rating: G (General Audience)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 83
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: 05736000
UPC: 786936764451
EAN: 0786936764451
ASIN: B0017TWV0U
Theatrical Release Date: March 7, 2008
Release Date: July 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Former Rental. Store stickers on case and disc has minor surface marks that do not affect play. Ships first class M-F. All products are 100% guaranteed from condition to delivery
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Choosing a college and striking out on one's own is an exciting time that requires a big adjustment by both child and parent, but few parents will have as much difficulty relinquishing control over their daughter's life as Chicago police chief James Porter (Martin Lawrence). The ultimate in loving but overprotective fathers, James wants his daughter Melanie (Raven-Symone) to attend nearby Northwestern College, so when she's waitlisted and called for an interview at Georgetown in Washington, D.C., James gets more than a little nervous. Squashing her plans for a road trip to D.C. with her girlfriends, James insists on a father-daughter expedition which he envisions being full of reminiscing, heart-to-heart conversations, and a healthy dose of persuasive promotion of Northwestern. The car trip definitely doesn't turn out as planned--instead it's a trip rife with strained silences and festering conflict in which the police vehicle rolls down a wooded embankment, Melanie's little brother (Eshaya Draper) and pet pig stow away in the back of the truck, and the Porters inexplicably keep running into a syrupy sweet father (Donny Osmond) and college-bound-daughter (Molly Ephraim) whose close relationship, clean-cut enthusiasm, and willingness to befriend and help the Porters is downright unsettling. Absurdly funny scenes include the family pig crashing and demolishing a fancy outdoor wedding; James' party-loving mother (Arnetia Walker) scrambling to live up to her son's uptight image of her as a fragile, elderly woman; James breaking into a local sorority house and hiding under a bed in hopes of protecting Melanie's innocence, and James' and Melanie's unexpected skydive into Washington, D.C., in order to keep Melanie's interview appointment at Georgetown. In the end, James and Melanie both mature as a result of their road trip and are finally able to forge an emotionally healthy relationship with one another. (Ages 8 and older) --Tami Horiuchi
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| Customer Reviews: Read 17 more reviews...
 Tell the driver that you're goin' to a Double Dutch Affair August 26, 2008
19 out of 23 found this review helpful
"But I have to be sure
When I walk out that door
Oh how I want to be free"
(Lyrics by Queen)
"I won't let you down
So please don't give me up
Because I would really, really love to stick around"
(Lyrics by George Michael)
Short Attention Span Summary (SASS):
1.Formulaic story about a possessive father, and a daughter who wants to break free and go to a college of her own choosing
2.Martin Lawrence plays the same character he's been playing for years
3.Ditto Raven-Symone
4.Donny Osmond does "perky"
5.The other actors don't do very much
This movie is sweet in places, funny in others, dumb a little too often, and predictable in its entirety. That said, it's harmless G-rated fun, rated suitable fare for captive audiences on airplane flights that exceed 2 hours.
To make a long story short, there are three things you'll remember from this movie:
1.Raven-Symone's version of "Double-Dutch Bus"
2.Donny Osmond
3.The scene stealing pig (!)
Recommended as a rental when young `uns are going to be watching.
Amanda Richards, August 25, 2008
College Road Trip - Good Movie For Families With Younger Kids, Check it Out! March 8, 2008
17 out of 18 found this review helpful
College Road Trip [Theatrical Release]
College Road Trip is a slap-stick comedy that is a great movie to take your kids to, as long as they are young. The main criticism I have of this movie is about the marketing, since most kids that are college bound are probably too old for this. The jokes are very predictable humor. If your kids are older than 14, they will probably find this style of humor too childish for their tastes. In that way this movie is a missed opportunity for Disney to expand their market to all the older Martin Lawrence and Raven fans.
If you've seen the trailers, you pretty much know the entire story. Dad (Martin Lawrence) takes daughter (Raven) on a road trip to check out colleges. Antics ensue.
Martin's character is a very over-protective police chief who is a bit of a control freak. His daughter has long outgrown being daddy's little girl. He wants her to stay local for college, but she wants to go away.
There's a genius younger brother and a pet pig to add the cute factor. There must be a lot of young geniuses out there because little brothers never have normal intelligence in movies or TV anymore, but I digress. Raven's friends are cliched teenaged valley girls who aren't even from the valley.
Most people who initially may be interested in seeing the movie are either Raven fans or Martin Lawrence fans. Yet this movie was made for an audience of much younger kids.
I am a huge Martin Lawrence fan and I think Raven is very talented and funny. But both of them were under used in this movie. Martin Lawrence is frequenty upstaged by his co-stars, and Raven does a good job but doesn't have the best lines. In fact, Will Sasso, Donny Osmand, his daughter, and the pig are the highlights of this movie. And they don't have enough scenes to make this movie really funny for adults.
Young kids from 5 to 12 or 13 will love the jokes. College bound kids will find themselves wondering why they called this "College Road Trip" when it's clearly designed for kids that aren't even out of grade school.
Overall, this movie is somewhat disappointing. It could have been so much more with the cast that they collected here. If you've got a group of young kids and want to take them to a fun and wholesome Disney movie, this is it. If you're kids are college bound, or even high school sophomores, they probably would rather see something else.
Enjoy!
Papa, Can You Drive Me? March 12, 2008
8 out of 12 found this review helpful
There's a sequence in "College Road Trip" in which a pig destroys a wedding because it's hopped up on coffee beans. This is soon followed by Raven-Symone leading a busload of Asian tourists in a rendition of "Double Dutch Bus." Near the end of the film, Symone and Martin Lawrence become on-the-spot skydivers; they land in a golf course where they just happen to run into the man whose daughter's wedding was destroyed by the pig. I'd like to say that this material is expected of a G rated film, but is it really? It seems more likely that the filmmakers were just grabbing at comedic straws and hoping that something would come of it. I won't say that this movie is bad, because I'm well aware that it's aiming for younger audiences. But it definitely isn't trying very hard; the theme is transitioning into adulthood, but the sense of humor is the kind only young children can appreciate.
The plot: seventeen-year-old Melanie Porter (Symone) wants to attend Georgetown Universtiy in Washington D.C., but her insanely overprotective father, James (Lawrence), wants her to attend Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Northwestern is only a forty-mile drive from their home just outside of Chicago, and as a police chief, he believes that such a short distance will keep his daughter safe. Besides, he had been planning this for her ever since she was born. He's clearly a control freak, which is partly why Melanie wants to go to a far-away college. But there's more to it than that: she wants to study law. Unbeknownst to James, a judge visiting her high school promised to arrange an interview for her at Georgetown. Also unbeknownst to James, Melanie and her friends had planned a road trip that would end up in Washington D.C. When he learns of all this, he decides to take Melanie on his own version of a road trip; hopefully, he can convince her that Northwestern is the best possible choice.
The comedic hijinx begin almost as soon as the trip. At the first stop--Northwestern--Melanie quickly discovers that her father staged an elaborate scheme; tour guides, students, and faculty all tell Melanie that Georgetown is a violent place. One person says that her father is smart and cool. After this fiasco, James' car gets a flat tire in the middle of the woods, and from this we discover that his brainy young son--Trey (Eshaya Draper)--has stowed away, along with his pet pig, Albert (who James doesn't trust; he calls him Houdini Pig). James jacks the car too far up, causing it to roll down a hill and into a ditch. They then stay at a hotel where the abovementioned wedding is being held. They then meet the father/daughter duo of Doug and Wendy Greenhut (Donny Osmond and Molly Ephraim), who are also on a college road trip. They happily drive James and Melanie to a bus station. Actually, "happily" is not a strong enough word here--they take perky to a level I don't care to describe.
Naturally, Melanie and James start reconnecting as the journey continues. But more importantly, James begins to realize that Melanie is no longer his precious little girl; he has to take the steps to let her go so that she can live her own life. Unoriginal, yes, but I think we all know that issues of love and trust play major roles in any such story. We even get the obligatory advice from Melanie's grandmother (Ametia Walker), required by the unspoken laws of family films to understand her granddaughter's frustration. None of that bothered me. What did bother me were scenes that took the comedy to unnecessary heights. Example: after sneaking into a sorority house to spy on Melanie, James is tasered by the sorority mother and arrested. Why did this scene have to be in the movie? Do you think young kids would find that funny? How many young kids actually know what a taser gun is? I suppose it may be more than I think, and that's sad when you stop and think about it.
Moments like that are genuinely bad. Everything else about the film is just mind-numbingly routine, offering nothing new in the way of character, theme, setting, or resolution. The best that can be said is that the actors look like they're having fun. This is especially true of Donny Osmond, who hams it up so thoroughly that it's more or less convincing. Raven-Symone seems to be in her element, but that isn't saying very much since her resume is largely composed of "That's So Raven."
I think by now you get the point I'm trying to make. Most films like this suffer because the filmmakers don't know how to handle the material; they make them too goofy or too sappy or too crazy, even when the story doesn't call for it. I didn't get that feeling from "College Road Trip"--it seemed like the filmmakers knew exactly what they were doing. That's fine, I guess, as long as you don't mind family films that are zany, sickly sweet, and predictable. I can pretty much guarantee that kids will enjoy this film, if not for its message, then for the delight of watching the adult characters do silly things. The pig will also get some laughs out of the little ones. Let's face it--the pig is damn cute. Parents, on the other hand, will get almost nothing from the film, save for a couple of tender moments between Lawrence and Symone. "College Road Trip" is only as good as it wanted to be, a fancy way of saying it didn't want to be very good at all.
"That's A Great Dad" ~ Calculating The Distance Between Here And Far From Home July 18, 2008
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
`College Road Trip' released in '08 is another slick Walt Disney Production that offers its audience 83 minutes of amusing and harmless, albeit mindless family entertainment that any self respecting adult should not be watching unless in the presence of a child under the age of 10. The scenarios are predictable and unoriginal and yet there's still enough magic in the old Disney vault to somehow make it work nonetheless.
I hate to say it but in my opinion the best sequences in the film revolve around the life-sized grinning Cheshire cat better known as Donny Osmond. His totally insane, off-the-wall performance was so far out there that it added a surreal atmosphere to an otherwise ordinary storyline.
Watch this one with a room filled with children. At least you'll enjoy seeing them have a good time even if you don't.
 Avoid. Even for fans of Lawrence/Raven/Osmond/Disney/pigs, this movie is a waste. March 24, 2008
5 out of 12 found this review helpful
Lar-ry-view:
This film is awful, how many ways are there to say it? It's a waste of time to watch, and a waste of time to review.
I love Martin Lawrence, Donny Osmond, Disney, and good G rated films, but this is just a bad movie.
I knew it was bad from the very start, when the mock-trial featured high school students with clown like wolf and pig noses rubber banded to their faces. It got worse from there.
I would have walked out after the first twenty minutes, but I forced myself to watch the whole movie so that I could see all of Donny's appearances. His performance is OK, more of the nerdy white guy schtick. There is about one funny joke in the entire movie, and Donny gets that at the very end. But nothing could be worth that wait. It's such a shame to see Donny's immense talent and charm absent from the screen for 30 years, only to surface in this wasteland. I'm glad to see him on the screen and his name in the credits, but I can't see how this is a good career move for him. Also, I wish he would be proud of his white style and awesome 1970s accomplishments, rather than trying to show that he's hip enough to recognize that he's nerdy. Trying to prove you're cool by showing that you recognize how uncool you are seems to be silly.
Why does Disney schlock out these supremely lame live action movies? With such masterful dramatic treatment of stories like Alice in Wonderland and The Little Mermaid, they have shown they know how to make a great story. It's sad.
The pig is a complete waste. If you are entertained by a pig walking on to the screen, then it might be ok. Except for one feature scene where he gets hopped up, that's all he does. The Einstein little brother is a complete waste. The wife is a complete waste. The crazy grandma is a complete waste. Basically I'm just compulsively typing to say that almost nothing works in this movie on any level.
There's one funny sequence where the GPS system takes them out to the wilderness. I've had that experience with GPS, many times.
Raven gives us one good performance of "The Double Dutch Bus," and Donny gets one funny joke. Other than that, this film is horrible. For the last half hour I was fidgeting and internally screaming "I can't take it anymore!" Boy was I glad when it was over.
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