CollegeFinder Blog

Commentary on College Road Trip

March 10, 2008 – 4:24 pm by S T

This past weekend, the geniuses at Disney unleashed an unfunny film starring Martin Lawrence. The best thing about a terrible movie is reading all the excruciating reviews. Not sure what Disney was thinking. Lawrence has not made a funny movie since…uhm….never?

Barry Wetcher/Walt Disney Pictures

Here’s a snippets from the NY Times:
College Road Trip” trawls for laughs with a chess-playing pig and a bus filled with karaoke-singing Japanese tourists….By the time Donny Osmond and Molly Ephraim show up to play a parent-child combo that’s scarier than the one embodied byAnthony Perkins in “Psycho,” you’ll be wishing that the pig had eaten the screenplay…..

NBC News:
With the exception of a two minute funny ending and a tender moment on a bus ride, “College Road Trip” is loud, annoying, and you can predict just about every single solitary word.

Film.com:
I hated every minute of this train wreck.

And these were the kind reviews. The nice ones. Some were too mean to share!

The movie is about a father who wants his daughter to attend Northwestern University…since the family lives in Chicago. The daughter however wishes to go to Georgetown University.

So, dad wants Northwestern. Girl wants Georgetown. Location is the issue. But, did you know there are other differences between the two schools? Nope. I’m not a college admissions expert. Neither do I plan on watching this “piece of art”.

I simply compared these to colleges on our CollegeFinder site. See screen shot.

The disparity in ACT/SAT scores, graduation/retention rates & tuition costs are negligible. The key differences:

Northwestern is easier to get accepted into, 29% chance,versus Georgetown, 22%.
Northwestern averages less post-college debt at $18, 362, versus Georgetown at $23,700.

In conclusion, while Martin Lawrence should use better judgment in choosing movies to act in, in the fatherly role, we admire his preference of Northwestern; increasing her odds of getting accepted AND reducing her educational debt!