ROAD TRIP

Directed by Todd Phillips. Starring Breckin Meyer, Tom Green, Sean William Scott, Amy Smart)

Just as last year's American Pie was supposedly a Porkys for the 1990s, so the cheerfully braindead Road Trip is a post-P.C. revamp of trash-pile classic National Lampoon's Animal House (1978). Unfortunately, it leaves its supposed inspiration looking like a once-in-a-lifetime masterpiece of philosophical depth and insight, and its refusal to admit to a sexist mentality makes it all the more contemptible. It's also nowhere near as funny as it thinks.

The dialogue - which is monopolised by the film's males, with the super-augmented female cast thrown a couple of lines here and there - is enough to make you yearn for the unenlightened but infinitely more honest style of Confessions of a Window Cleaner.

The plot is this: archetypal American campus teen, Josh, is Texas-bound with a trio of equally tired stereotypes (the geek, the jock etc.), in an effort to intercept a videotape which is currently winging its evil way towards Josh's girlfriend Tiffany. Said vid contains footage of Josh on the fluid-exchange programme with another sophomore, and therefore must be deflected from its destination by fair means or foul.

The 'high-points' here (equivalent to the flan-fucking scene in American Pie ) include a Mrs. Robinson-style seduction scene wherein a grown woman rams her fingers up a teenage boy's arse, and a viciously cringeworthy sequence in which the crew's geekiest virgin goes less-then-hell-for-leather with a particularly large black girl. Try and get a laugh out of that.

There was a time when this kind of material (Dumb & Dumber, Something About Mary) had some refreshing

anti-PC backlash value. But by now, even the Farrelly

brothers can't quite cut it like they used to, and what's become an increasingly tired genre should be laid to rest pronto.

Road Trip isn't substantial enough to be offensive - it's just a case of been there, seen that and can't raise even a chuckle anymore. Strictly for early teens.