Caution: Laughs Ahead

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

Stupidly--smartly is not within their natural range--a bunch of guys at mythical Ithaca College snail-mail the wrong videotape. They think they are sending the one in which Josh (Breckin Meyer) expresses his moony affection for his lifelong girlfriend Tiffany (Rachel Blanchard), who is studying veterinary medicine in faraway Austin, Texas. What they actually dispatch is hard evidence that he has strayed with Beth (Amy Smart).

Time for a hasty Road Trip. They have three days to retrieve the tape before Tiffany pops it into her VCR. That's plenty of opportunity for Meyer and friends (Seann William Scott, Paulo Costanzo and DJ Qualls) to get into the kind of trouble that ought to offend everyone from feminists to animal-rights supporters, senior citizens to the visually challenged. Ought to, but perhaps won't.

Partly that's because they really don't mean any harm; it just sort of follows in their erratic wake. Partly it's because director and co-writer Todd Phillips understands that comedy needs to breathe. Maybe "nuances" is too fancy a word for most of what happens in Road Trip, but the way the guys manage to wreck their car is leisurely, funnily explored. So is the ultimately redeemed awkwardness of their attempt to crash at an all-black fraternity house. The stoned fecklessness of narrator Tom Green ices the lopsided cake.

Good-natured anarchy is political correctness's great corrective. Maybe this isn't quite There's Something About Mary, but it is merry enough.

--By Richard Schickel