Martin Lawrence plays Police Chief James Porter. He has a loving wife, a young genius son (who, in turn, has a genius pet pig), and an intelligent daughter (Raven-Symone) who is about to graduate from high school and go off to college. Since her birth, James has sought to control every aspect of Melanie's life, and has sought to spend as much time as possible with her. Unable to see her leave the house, he decided at an early age that she would attend Northwestern University, a mere 20 minute drive from the house.
But, when Melanie's senior project impresses a university recruiter and he invites her to interview at Georgetown, she starts to plan a road trip with her best friends. Needless to say, James doesn't like this idea a whole lot, and instead of letting her ride with her two friends, he decides to drive her to Georgetown himself. Along the way, he plans to do whatever it takes to convince her that Northwestern is where she really wants to be, including making an unscheduled stop at the nearby university and paying a few people to badmouth the prestigious college and talk up his choice. Of course, Melanie finds out and James' plan backfires.
The pair also soon discovers that they have a stowaway, the son (Eshaya Draper) and his pig. Because of the time crunch, they decide to let the boy tag along, but when their car gets destroyed, it looks like the journey will be even harder than they anticipated. Along the way to Georgetown, James reconnects with his daughter (which surprises James since he didn't even realize a rift had formed), the troop meets up with a variety of other characters (including a few father-daughter pairs) and general mayhem ensues.
Like I said, in general, the principals of College Road Trip aren't bad. The problem stems from the sheer amount of over-acting that oozes out of Raven and Lawrence. Raven in particular really bothered me. I mean, the girl has been acting since she was like five years-old, I would have to imagine that she has developed some sense of acting skills in that time. I can understand her Disney Channel work needing to be over-the-top, but only because that is the style of all of those shows, but even her full-feature theatrical release stuff gets annoying fast. And, of course, there is a segment where Raven sings, in this case, a modernized version of the 80's song "Double Dutch Bus." Quite frankly, the best parts of the movie were the few scenes involving the son and pig. The pair just stole the scene each time. Eshaya plays a great straight-man, especially when standing next to his over-the-top co-stars. And let's not even talk about the made-for-TV level visual effects.
I'm sorry to say that there are very few redeeming qualities of College Road Trip, and I can't really recommend it as a rental. Maybe if the target audience was middle schoolers, but considering the subject matter is about going away to college, it just doesn't work.
