Film Reviews

A road movie that barely learns to drive ultimately careers out of control

Emer Reynolds’s feature debut Joyride has an impressive cast, but sorely lacks any kind of comic subtlety, writes John Maguire

Olivia Colman and Charlie Reid in Joyride: despite the obvious talent involved, every character remains a thinly sketched cipher

Award-winning director Emer Reynolds, whose artful and inquisitive documentaries look at spectrum-spanning subjects from the Voyager spacecraft to the rocker Phil Lynott, makes her feature debut with Joyride, an odd-couple Irish road movie about motherhood.

Working in a venerable genre with the chance to blend drama and comedy, Reynolds has assembled a fine cast which includes everyone’s favourite actor Olivia Colman. She has a script from up-and-coming screenwriter Ailbhe Keogan (who is further credited as ...