As a film brand, National Lampoon has been pretty much a joke for years now. Way past their glory days of Animal House and the Vacation films, the once strong humour magazine/production company has been content to spin its wheels producing many forgettable direct-to-video efforts like Gold Diggers, Pucked, and the three Van Wilder flicks. In fact, it’s gotten to the point where I see the name above the title and I consciously go out of my way to avoid it. Which is why I was surprisingly pleased at how much I ended up enjoying Senior Trip. For a low-budget, Canadian-shot effort this isn’t nearly as poor as a lot of their other films and probably deserves to be better known than it actually is.

The set-up couldn’t get any more generic as we meet the students of Fairmount High. All your typical stereotypes are on hand from the stoner duo, to the slutty girl, and right on down to the overweight guy who loves Asians. And they’re all watched over by our high-strung Principal Moss (Matt Frewer) who isn’t too happy when he finds out that for ‘National Cut Day’ a bunch of his students, led by the marijuana loving pals Dags (Jeremy Renner) and Reggie (Rob Moore), have decided to throw a party at his house and cause a bunch of damage.

This leads to a group of our partiers being thrown into detention and being forced by Moss to write a letter to the President about the American educational system. While everyone else is content to spend their punishment goofing-off, brainy Lisa (Fiona Loewi) does the project which not only ends-up being loved by the President but leads to a field trip to Washington, DC to appear in front of the Senate.

As expected all sorts of mayhem and mishaps follow when Moss and his group of misfits board a bus driven by the Quaalude-popping Red (Tommy Chong) and head out on the open road. This gives scripters Roger Kumble (Cruel Intentions) and I. Marlene King the chance to pile-on a handful of dopey set pieces as this minor teen comedy attempts to ape Vacation and various other ‘road comedies’ before stumbling to an unfunny finale when they finally get-up in front of a Senate meeting - a last third that also includes a Senator, played by Lawrence Dane, kidnapping one of them to try and make them look dumb and embarass the President. They’ve also thrown-in Kevin McDonald, or the cult Canadian sketch series “The Kids in the Hall”, as a nutty Star Trek obsessed security guard who’s after Dags and Reggie.

A lot of the mileage National Lampoon’ Senior Trip gets from its standard humour comes courtesy of our likeable cast. Renner and Moore play off each other quite well as the dumb stoner types with Renner, making his debut here, going on to a respectable career that includes the biopic Dahmer, the Charlize Theron drama North Country, and even the zombie-fighting sequel 28 Weeks Later. All the other young cast members deliver what’s expected of their by-the-book characters and Frewer (best known for playing “Max Headroom” in the television series and Coca-Cola commercials) does his neurotic best as Moss. Chong even gets the chance to poke fun at his Cheech & Chong days by singing their song, “Earache My Eye” at one point.

In the hands of director Kelly Makin (“Kids in the Hall”, Tiger Claws), Senior Trip manages to be more entertaining than pretty much every National Lampoon comedy made after 1989. Sure, some of the jokes are pretty lame, and the plot is as generic as they come but Makin keeps things going at a quick pace and our cast seems to be enjoying themselves making this an okay timewaster if it happens to pop-up on cable during a lazy evening. (Chris Hartley, 10/24/09)

Directed By: Kelly Makin.
Written By: Roger Kumble, I. Marlene King.

Starring: Matt Frewer, Valerie Mahaffey, Lawrence Dane, Tommy Chong.

Picture Ratio: 1.85:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: The transfer here looks perfectly acceptable with decent clarity and a clean look. Nothing to complain about.

Extras: Just a trailer.