Joy Ride (2001) from Tuna and Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Joy Ride (2001) is an escapist action/horror, and the plot seems entirely derivative to me, although it was well-received by the public and the critics.

Leelee pokes out of nearly everything she wears, but keeps covered. However, it is Leelee with good pokies. I certainly wish someone would get her into a good film and out of her clothes. To me, this is little more than an ok genre effort, or C+.

Scoop's note:

I guess there is a lesson to be learned here about casting. I assumed it was a comedy/horror film because Steve Zahn was in it!

This DVD is worth renting and watching if you are a movie buff, but not for the movie itself. The movie is an OK genre pic, nothing special.

But the deleted scenes are fascinating.

There is one deleted scene, for example, that is 29 minutes long! Normally when you watch these, you find that they are just slight variations of the scenes that made the final cut. Not this time. In this case, the deleted scenes represent a competely different movie. They had this film signed, sealed, and delivered when they decided that it just wasn't taut enough, so they rewrote the last thirty minutes. In fact the original film was far different from the one which arrived in the theaters.

After they decided to scrap the first version of the film, they still had problems working out the details. There are four more alternate endings for the theatrical version, and the director mentions that he filmed the very last minute of the film several more times trying to get exactly the right finish.

Frankly, the version he finally decided on seemed to me like a blatant trailer for a sequel, but he denies that emphatically in his commentary.

Here is what I recommend.

1) Watch the movie. It isn't bad

2) Then watch the deleted scenes with the director's commentary. Listen to his reasoning. They decided to discard the entire movie and start again - and that makes for an interesting story.