“Humour is consistent with pathos, whilst wit is not.”
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, the characters in Michael Winterbottom’s The Trip, have sharp wits. Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, the actors who portray those characters, are humorous.

Let me backtrack. In 2006, Winterbottom directed Coogan and Brydon in The Cock and Bull Story, in which the comic pair ostensibly played themselves in a film that depicted the behind-the-scenes difficulties on the set of a fictional production of Tristram Shandy. It was, essentially, a metafictional movie about a fictional production of a metafictional novel. That snake is still eating its own tail.

The version of themselves that they played in that film were not the real Coogan and Brydon, but egotistical and fiercely competitive versions. They played off of one another so well playing unpleasant plays on themselves, that Winterbottom thought it would be great to put the pair together on a road trip, let them delve further into the characters in an improvisatory setting and see what would happen. He was right: it was great.

In The Trip‘s original form as a six-episode BBC sitcom, Coogan has been asked to do a celebrity food tour of the north country of Britain, writing up the restaurants for The Observer. When his girlfriend suddenly moves back to America right before the trip, he’s left without a traveling companion. After a number of other folks turn him down, he asks Brydon.

The series was brilliant, concentrating vast amounts of time on these two having meals together, doing competing celebrity impressions, and generally getting on each other’s nerves as only two longtime — but not extremely close — friends can. These rambling sections are stitched together with a through line that focuses on how these performers are dealing with heading into middle age.

For Coogan, that manifests itself in drug abuse and empty one-night stands — even as he tries to win back his girlfriend over the phone — and anxious dreams where he’s just on the cusp of real stardom, or where what stardom he has is just from his frequent appearances on the pages of the tabloids. He feels superior to Brydon, but is secretly jealous of Brydon’s unassuming security in his place as a comic mostly known for one particular bit. Brydon, for his part, has his own, much more subtle insecurities and middle-aged crises; his tendency to start performing for anyone who happens to be around is a clear cry for approval.

For the film, the necessity of editing the three hours of the series down to a movie-friendly 107 minutes results in a loss of much of the dinner table banter in favor of the scenes that move the plot forward. Fans of the series will miss the loose feel of that footage, but the film doesn’t feel incomplete, as one might expect after the conversion. The pacing is just entirely different, much tighter and with a sometimes too-hurried drive to get to the next destination. But as a standalone piece, it’s still absolutely hilarious.

Back to that quote from Coleridge, a writer Coogan has a bit of an obsession with in the film. This is a witty pair, and their verbal sparring might draw blood if they were using anything other than words. They’re not mean, but they both take great delight in trying to one-up the other in determining who does the best Michael Caine impression, or the best Bond villain, and even more delight when one of them goes down a comedic path that hits a dead-end. Students of improvisation should love watching these two at work.

But if it was just the two of them trading witticisms, things would get awfully tiresome. To sit watching them for the length of a movie, they need to appeal to the emotions in a genuine way, and that’s where the immense talent of Coogan and Brydon — the actors, not the characters — comes in. The sad clown humor of Coogan trying, badly, to replicate Brydon’s signature bit, while applying anti-aging cream under his eyes, is a perfect, funny and genuinely moving summation of his character. As are the moments for Brydon where he tries to engage his wife in phone sex using Hugh Grant’s voice, but looking sad-eyed and rather exasperated with himself while doing it. These are laughs that come from the heart, not the head, and it’s what makes The Trip so engaging.

Do be prepared for plenty of in-jokes aimed at established fans of British film and telly. The first sequence of the men driving — a daily ritual in the film that holds plenty of great moments of its own, including a rousing a cappella duet of Abba’s “Winner Takes it All” — finds Coogan inexplicably soundtracking their ride through the bucolic British countryside with Joy Division’s “Atmosphere”, an obvious shoutout to Winterbottom’s Coogan-starring 24 Hour Party People. Add to that plenty of references to Coogan’s breakout role as Alan Partridge in the late-’90s comedy show, Brydon’s Radio 4 appearances, and those who aren’t hardcore anglophiles may find some of the jokes out of reach.

Those jokes come fast enough that it shouldn’t really matter, though, unless you’re predisposed to hate British humor. The line between these characters being either utterly annoying or completely relatable is surprisingly fine, and Coogan and Brydon masterfully keep themselves on the right side of it. I don’t think I’d want to actually take a road trip with these two, but I’m happy to watch them annoy one another for hours.

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Directed by Michael Winterbottom
Starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon
Running time: 107 minutes
Not Rated
Opens today at E Street Cinema.