Closing credits prove best part of 'Eurotrip'

By Chris Hewitt
Knight Ridder News Service

From left, Travis Webster, Scott Mechlowicz and Jacob Pitts bare all in "Eurotrip," which was modeled on "Road Trip" but isn't as funny. Blue Seas Productions Inc. 'Eurotrip' R, for tons of frontal nudity and raw language as well as drug abuse 91 minutes

That's the dilemma with "Eurotrip," in which a side-splitting cameo by Joanna Lumley unspools as an outtake during the closing credits. Lumley isn't in the movie proper, but her role as the unhospitable hostess of a Teutonic youth hostel is funnier than anything else in this cautiously written, charismatically acted gross-out comedy.

It's your basic four-friends-on-a-road-trip-encounter-romance-and-vomit movie, in which the regurgitation begins during the opening credits and gets gurgling again every five minutes or so.

I like the cast of newcomers (particularly the Owen Wilson-esque Jacob Pitts), but the movie doesn't push its outrageousness hard enough to give us that I-can't-believe-I'm-laughing-at-that feeling. Nude beaches? Incestuous kissing? Big whoop. Heck, even "Barbershop 2" is more politically incorrect than that.

"Eurotrip" is probably about two-thirds as funny as "Road Trip," on which it's modeled. It also boasts a primo running gag featuring Matt Damon, and at least the filmmakers had the smarts to include the Lumley scene at the end instead of saving it for the DVD.