EuroTrip
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| EuroTrip | |
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| Directed by | Jeff Schaffer |
| Produced by | Alec Berg Daniel Goldberg David Mandel Jackie Marcus |
| Starring | Scott Mechlowicz Jacob Pitts Matt Damon Michelle Trachtenberg Dominic Raacke David Hasselhoff Travis Wester Jessica Böhrs |
| Distributed by | DreamWorks |
| Release date(s) | February 20, 2004 |
| Running time | 90 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | ~ US$25,000,000 |
| IMDb profile | |
EuroTrip is a 2004 American comedy film about a group of young Americans and their adventures traveling around Europe.
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[edit] Synopsis
EuroTrip begins at the high school graduation of the main character, Scotty. After he gets dumped by his girlfriend and attends the graduation afterparty, Scotty gets home and talks to his German penpal, Mieke, who he mistakes for a perverted man when he finds out that Mieke wants to arrange a meeting. Drunk and angry, he tells Mieke he's a sick perverted freak, but later realizes Mieke is actually an attractive German girl. Thus the Eurotrip begins when Scotty and his friends set off to Germany to win back Mieke's heart.
- Hudson, Ohio, United States, although not really filmed there, but at ISP, International School of Prague: Start of the movie, where Scotty is dumped by his girlfriend Fiona (Kristin Kreuk) and attends a friend's graduation party. At the party, Fiona's new boyfriend (Matt Damon) sings the movie's theme song as a salute to her, called "Scotty Doesn't Know". Everyone except for Scotty cheers with him as he sings. Following the party, where he gets very drunk, Scotty receives an e-mail from his German penpal asking to have a meeting in America, but mistaking the name "Mieke" with the English "Mike", he sends her an e-mail saying "I don't want to arrange any meetings with you, you sick German freak. So please keep your hands off my genitals, and never write to me again, and don't come to America. Goodbye." When she reads this she becomes angry and blocks his e-mail address. Upon realizing Mieke is actually a girl, Scotty tries to send an e-mail apologizing to Mieke. After he gets a message that she has blocked his e-mail address, he realizes he must travel to Germany to win her back. Unable to afford a passenger flight, Scotty and his friend Cooper book passage on a courier jet.
- London, England: Since the courier manager only had a flight going to London, they took that bargain for $118, because Cooper insists that Europe is "the size of the Eastwood Mall (which is a real mall in Niles, Ohio)". There they go to the Fiesty Goat for a drink, and inside are football hooligans (led by former Welsh footballer Vinnie Jones) who chastise them for invading their privacy as it is a "Private members bar for fans of the Manchester United football club". But after Scotty successfully diffuses their anger by singing a modified version of "Morning Train (Nine To Five)" by Sheena Easton to include Manchester United in the song, they are accepted.
- Paris, France: After being accepted by the football hooligans, they board a bus across the channel and into France. Along the way, the bus driver purposely drives on the left side of the road in France, thus causing a huge traffic commotion. After the football hooligans get off the bus, they see a person in a France football shirt and chase after him. Soon after Scotty and Cooper meet up with the twins, Jenny and Jamie, and go to see the Louvre museum, although there is a huge line. While waiting endlessly, Scotty starts imitating a mime performing the robot dance who sees this as competition for donations. The two begin to fight in a Matrix/robot-style. Scotty apparently seems to win the fight as he kicks the mime in the groin. At dinner Scotty and Cooper convince the twins to come along with them, and so they plan their European vacation, using the condiments on their restaurant table as symbols of all the European cities they intend to visit to their destination of Berlin. The following morning, Jenny meets an enchanting European man at the train station, but has to leave to catch their train. Actually, the train station shown in the movie is the one of Milano Stazione Centrale, and you can recognize it by the "Ferrovie dello Stato" signs and ticketing machines; moreover, the train station looks exactly like the one in Milan.
- Crans Sur Mer, France: After a long train trip — during which the males of the group are molested by an Italian man (Fred Armisen) — they end up at a quaint French town where they go to a nude beach. To their dismay, it is full of naked men, also looking for nude girls. After Jenny takes off her shirt, they get chased down the beach by naked men desperate to see a nude girl.
- Amsterdam, Netherlands: A much-needed stop along the way, where Cooper goes to "Club Vandersexxx" (which is, unbeknownst to him, an especially brutal BDSM club), where he is seduced by Mrs. Vandersexxx, played by Lucy Lawless and is later tortured by Hans and Gruber (a reference to the villain in Die Hard, played by Alan Rickman) and has a hellish night. Scotty and Jenny go to a cafe and eat what they think are hash brownies and proceed to "freak out". However, they later learn that the brownies they ate were not hash brownies and that the cafe were just an ordinary Dutch bakery, much to their embarrassment. While Jamie is at a camera store seeking to have his prized Leica camera cleaned, the shop keeper is taken with Jamie and takes him to the alley behind the store. Unfortunately, it is here where Jamie, who is in charge of all the money and passports, is robbed of everything by a mugger (Diedrich Bader) while receiving a blowjob from the shop keeper, and leaves the group with nothing.
- Bratislava, Slovakia: With no choice but to find a ride to Berlin, they manage to get a truck driver to pull over. Unfortunately, he does not speak English, and Scotty must use what little German he knows to communicate with him. He misunderstands the burly driver and believes they are indeed going to Berlin based on the fact he said it numerous times - though he was actually trying to explain he was going "nowhere near Berlin" as he is wanted for murder there. So they end up in Bratislava, where they are horrified by Eastern Europe. They talk to a Slovak (Played by Rade Šerbedžija), and discover that there is no train coming, as the first one is still being built. It is also revealed the Slovaks are only just now receiving American TV shows from the 1980's, as evinced by the Slovakian saying "Miami Vice is number one new show man" and "Stop. Hammer time!" They only have $1.83 American, but due to the (exaggerated) exchange rate, they get the executive suite at a lavish Slovak hotel. For 27 cents, they get into a nightclub that is apparently owned by the man Jenny met at the train station in Paris. She discovers that he is married and bisexual and in a fit of depression, downs half a bottle of absinthe — becoming so intoxicated that she makes out with Jamie, her brother. The next morning, the same Slovak (Šerbedžija) shows up in his Škoda Favorit car painted like The General Lee (but with "07" painted on the side, rather than "01"), and he drives them to Berlin.
- Berlin, Germany: After reaching Berlin, they find out that Mieke is gone on a boat tour for the summer and will only be reachable in Rome for a short time for orientation. Cooper sees a young boy — Mieke's stepbrother Heinrich — goose-stepping and acting like Adolf Hitler, but fails in trying to bring attention to the boy. In order to afford airplane tickets, Jamie sells his precious Leica camera to earn enough money to travel to Rome.
- Vatican City: The final destination, Scotty and Cooper end up running through the Vatican, ringing the bell of Saint Marco (as Cooper pulls on its rope out of curiosity) as well as lighting up white smoke (by throwing Cooper's burning "pope hat" into the fireplace), which makes everyone think he will be the new pope. There he finds Mieke, and runs through many people and jumps down a banister to meet up with her. Although the Swiss Vatican guards realized what was going on and attempted to stop them and severely punish them for their actions, the football hooligans from earlier in the movie come back (because of their hatred toward Italians) and thwart their attempts. Soon after, Scotty introduces himself to Mieke and they spend time having sex in a confession booth before Mieke must board her boat. A man whom Jamie just took on a tour of the Vatican turns out to be Arthur Frommer, (Played by Patrick Malahide) author of the guidebook Jamie has memorized and he hires Jamie to tour every museum and cathedral in Europe. It is here where the vacation ends and the group splits up to head back home. On the flight home — aboard a passenger jet instead of a courier plane — Cooper and Jenny have sex in one of the plane's washrooms. (After they both complained about not getting any crazy European sex).
- Oberlin College, Ohio, USA: At the end of the movie, Scotty is in college following the summer, where out of nowhere Mieke becomes his roommate, due to another misunderstanding about her name. The movie ends with them kissing and Cooper thinks he is making out with a male roommate and trying over and over again to talk to Scotty on the phone.
[edit] Cast
Main Characters
- Scott Mechlowicz – Scott (Scotty) Thomas
- Jacob Pitts – Cooper Harris
- Michelle Trachtenberg – Jenny
- Travis Wester – Jamie
Ohio
- Kristin Kreuk – Fiona
- Nial Iskhakov – Bert Thomas (Scott's brother)
- Matt Damon – Donny
- Jeffrey Tambor – Scott's father
London
- Vinnie Jones – Mad Maynard (Hooligans' leader)
Paris
- J.P. Manoux – Robot Man
- Patrick Rapold – Christoph
- Fred Armisen – Creepy Italian Guy on Train
Amsterdam
- Lucy Lawless – Madame Vandersexxx
- Go Go Dyei Jen-Michel – Rasta Waiter
- Jana Pallaske – Anna the Camera Store Girl
- Diedrich Bader – Mugger
Bratislava
- Dominic Raacke – Trucker
- Steve Hytner – Green Fairy
- Rade Šerbedžija – Tibor
- David Hasselhoff – Sänger Scott Thomas
Berlin
- Walter Sittler – Mieke's father
- Adam Dotlacil – Heinrich
Vatican City
- Predrag Bjelac – Italian man
- Joel Kirby – Swiss Guard
- Jessica Böhrs – Mieke
- Patrick Malahide – Arthur Frommer
- Jack Marston – Pope John Paul II
- Mindy Sterling – Woman in confessional
[edit] Box Office
The film initially tanked at the box office because of a mound of varying factors, including the big success of The Passion of the Christ and a backlash against the R-rated teen comedy as proven later that spring by the flopping of 20th Century Fox's The Girl Next Door. The film finished with $17,718,233 at the box office.[1] However, the film did well in rentals and has become a cult favorite in the genre.
[edit] Theme song
"Scotty Doesn't Know" is a song that was written exclusively for the movie. It is performed by the band Lustra, but in the movie, the lead singer was portrayed by Matt Damon, whose character has surreptitiously stolen a girl from "Scotty," hence the title and subject matter.
The song contains numerous lewd references to how Scotty's girlfriend Fiona (played by Kristin Kreuk) has been cheating on him with Damon's character for an extended period of time. In the movie, the song becomes something of a popular phenomenon: a week-or-so later in Bratislava, the song has been remixed and is playing in a popular nightclub. By the end of the movie, it has become so widespread and (presumably) popular that Scotty's best friend Cooper is able to use it as his cell phone ring tone. The song is noted by several characters in the film (including Scotty's own family) for having a "catchy tune".
