Tiffany Haddish Goes From 'Girl's Trip' To 'Bad Trip' In A Movie That Features A Mixture Of Traditional Narrative And Actual Pranks

As younger viewers continue to spend more time watching YouTube than going to the movies, here's a depressing thought: what if the movies begin to evolve to seem more like YouTube videos? A new film called Bad Trip is coming out this fall and is seemingly trying out that tactic. Eric Andre, Lil Rel Howery, and Tiffany Haddish star in a film that blends a traditional narrative with a prank format, in which an overarching story unfolds and real people are fooled along the way. Check out the trailer below.

Sacha Baron Cohen had to create elaborate disguises for his Showtime series Who Is America?, but Haddish is a full-blown movie star whose career has skyrocketed to the point of market saturation over the past two years. People wouldn't recognize her? Maybe it says a lot about the state of modern movie stardom that she can participate in something like this and not be immediately noticed.

Andre's appeal is admittedly a bit more niche (he's probably best known for his Adult Swim show, but he was great on the FXX comedy Man Seeking Woman), but Lil Rel appeared in Get Out and had a CBS sitcom that lasted one season, so I wonder how many deleted scenes there are of regular folks recognizing any of these actors.

Kitao Sakurai, who directed a couple dozen episodes of The Eric Andre Show, is behind the camera here, and the screenplay was written by Jeff Tremaine, one of the masterminds behind Jackass. Tremaine and Andre are also producing the film alongside Dave Bernad (Superstore, The Mule) and Ruben Fleischer (Venom, Zombieland).

So is this a harmless, fun idea for a film, or a harbinger of doom for the concept of movies as we know them? It's too early to say, but the most cynical part of me wouldn't be at all surprised if nostalgic listicles ten years from now mention Bad Trip as the beginning of the end.

Here's the film's official synopsis:

From the producer of JACKASS and BAD GRANDPA, this hidden camera comedy follows two best friends go on a cross-country road trip full of hilarious, inventive pranks, pulling its real-life audience into the mayhem.

Bad Trip hits theaters on October 25, 2019.