EuroTrip

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EuroTrip
Directed by Jeff Schaffer
Produced by Alec Berg
Daniel Goldberg
David Mandel
Jackie Marcus
Joe Medjuck
Written by Alec Berg
David Mandel
Jeff Schaffer
Starring Scott Mechlowicz
Jacob Pitts
Michelle Trachtenberg
Travis Wester
Jessica Böhrs
Lucy Lawless
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 produced by the same people as Road Trip and Old School. It tells the story of an American high-school graduate and his friends traveling around Europe. The film grossed a worldwide total of $20,796,847.

Contents

[edit] Plot synopsis

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Please edit the article to focus on discussing the work rather than merely reiterating the plot.

[edit] Summary

Four friends travel across Europe in search of Scott Thomas's German pen pal Mieke, whom he initially mistakes for a guy, but now realizes he has feelings for. They visit London, Paris, Amsterdam, Bratislava, Berlin, and Rome, getting into all manner of awkward and embarrassing situations along the way.

[edit] Expanded overview

EuroTrip begins with the main character Scott Thomas, know as Scotty, being dumped by his girlfriend Fiona at his high school graduation, in front of his parents and filmed on camcorder. Devastated, he e-mails the happenings to his German pen pal Mieke, which he mistakenly pronounces as "Mike" during which his friend, Cooper Harris, quips about all people on the Internet being gay men looking for sex.

They decide to go to a party to prove that Fiona won't stop him enjoying graduation, but they arrive to find that Fiona has been having sex with the lead singer of the college band, and are then treated to a performance of the song "Scotty Doesn't Know", in which every detail of the lewd affair is revealed with an accompanying explanation of why Scotty didn't know about it.

Drunk and angry, Scott arrives home and receives an e-mail reply from "Mike", who says "he" is sorry for all that has happened to Scott, and wants to arrange a meeting in order to make him feel better. Scott replies by telling Mieke "he" is a sick German freak, resonating on his friend Cooper's earlier comment warning him about Internet relationships.

The next day Scott's brother Bert explains to him that "Mieke" in German is not "Mike" as Scott thought, but actually a name similar to "Michelle" in the English language. "No, retardo. That's not "Mike", it's Mieke, a common German girl's name, similar to our Michelle". Realizing his mistake, and that he has feelings for her, he tries desperately to e-mail Mieke again, only to find she had blocked his address. He resolves to travel to Germany, to fix the situation and confront her face-to-face. He tells his plans to Cooper, after which they plan to travel to Germany together.

Unable to afford a passenger ticket, Scott and Cooper receive a discounted rate by traveling as couriers to London, England. In London, the two friends go to a pub called The Fiesty Goat, believing that there is no drinking age in England, but realize too late it is a private pub for the members of the Manchester United football team fan club, and do not receive a warm welcome from the fans. The two teens say that they are a Manchester United fan club from Ohio, and after making up their own version of the football team's anthem (Scott sings Sheena Easton's song "9 to 5", and throws in a line praising Manchester United, which the hooligans find acceptable), the group welcomes them and they have a wild night of drinking. The next day, Scott and Cooper wake up on a double-decker bus, on their way to Paris for a Manchester United game.

After riding through the streets of France on the wrong side of the road, accompanied with a torrent of swearing and abuse being hurled by the hooligans, Scott and Cooper meet up with their friends in Paris, twins Jenny and Jamie. The gang decide to do "something fun", and end up while waiting in line for the Louvre. While in line, Scott gets into a robot dance showdown with a mime street performer and wins by kicking the mime in the groin. The four then go to a restaurant and Jenny and Jamie decide that they will also go to Berlin with Scott and Cooper to find Mieke. They agree on visiting other parts of Europe, since this would be the last summer the four of them will spend together before going off to different colleges.

After a long train trip, during which an overly enthusiastic Italian man attempts to grope them, the group ends up in the fictitious French town of Crans Sur Mer, where they visit a nude beach. To their dismay, it is full of naked men, also looking for nude girls. When Jenny arrives, they are chased down the beach by the desperate beach goers.

Later they arrive in Amsterdam, Netherlands (which is actually filmed in Prague) which leads to Cooper going to "Club Vandersexxx" (which is, unbeknownst to him, an especially brutal BDSM club), where he is seduced and later tortured. Scott and Jenny go to a café and eat what they believe to be hash brownies and proceed to "freak out." However, they learn much to their embarrassment that the brownies were not hash brownies and that the café was just an ordinary Dutch bakery. While Jamie is at a camera store seeking to have his prized Leica M7 camera cleaned, shop keeper Anna takes him to the alley behind the store to engage in oral sex. Unfortunately, Jamie, who is in charge of all of the money and passports, is robbed of everything by a mugger.

With no choice but to hitchhike to Berlin, they manage to get a truck driver to pull over. Unfortunately, he does not speak English and Scotty uses 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 that he said it numerous times—though he was actually trying to explain he was going "nowhere near Berlin" as he is wanted there for stabbing a woman and sexually assaulting a horse. Consequently they end up in Bratislava, Slovakia where they are horrified by the desolation of Eastern Europe.

They talk to a Slovak man and discover that there is no train network. They only have US$1.83 but due to the (exaggerated) exchange rate, they get the executive suite at a lavish Slovak hotel. Deciding to have "some more fun", they arrive at a nightclub where a remixed and translated version of the song "Scotty Doesn't Know" is playing in the background. The nightclub is apparently owned by the man Jenny met at the railway station in Paris, but she discovers that he is married and bisexual, and in a fit of depression, Jenny downs half a bottle of absinthe—becoming so intoxicated that she makes out with Jamie, her brother. The next morning, the same Slovak man drives them to Berlin.

After reaching Berlin, they find out that Mieke has gone on a boat tour for the summer and will only be reachable in Rome for a short time. In order to afford flight tickets, Jamie sells his precious Leica camera.

In Rome, the four go to Vatican City, since Mieke will be there before she leaves. Cooper manages to accidentally ring the bell of Saint Marco, before setting fire to a "pope hat" and throwing it onto the fireplace, which lights up white smoke in Vatican City, making everyone believe a new pope has been elected. Trying to escape, Scotty gets tangled in a golden curtain, before stumbling out on the balcony where he is believed to be the new pope (to what the real Pope, who is watching the event on TV from his house, responds "What the fuck!?"). Spotting Mieke, he jumps down a banister to meet up with her. Although the Swiss Guards realized what was going on and attempted to stop them and severely punish them for their actions, the football hooligans from England return and thwart their attempts. Soon after, Scotty introduces himself to Mieke and they spend time having sex in a confessional before Mieke boards her boat. A man whom Jamie took on a tour of the Vatican turns out to be Arthur Frommer, author of the guidebook Jamie has memorized and he hires Jamie to tour every museum and cathedral in Europe. Cooper and Jenny have sex in one of the aircraft's toilets.

At the end of the film, Scott moves to Oberlin College. Mieke surprises him when she says that she is his roommate, due to another misunderstanding about her name. The song "Scotty Doesn't Know" has apparently become so widespread and presumably popular that Cooper has it as his cell phone ringtone. The film ends with Scott and Mieke kissing.

[edit] Production

For the production of EuroTrip, Matt Damon shaved his head during filming of the movie. Also, when the main characters are boarding the train station in Paris, the scene was actually filmed in Prague's main railway station (Hlavní nádraží).

[edit] Cast

[edit] DVD release date

Eurotrip was released on DVD on June 1, 2004, in an R-rated theatrical version (91 mins) and an "Unrated" extended version (93 mins).

[edit] Soundtrack

Eurotrip
Soundtrack by various artists
Released February 24, 2004
Genre Punk rock, pop
Label Milan
Professional reviews
  1. "Scotty Doesn't Know" - Lustra
  2. "My Generation" - Chapeaumelon (The Who cover)
  3. "Wild One" - Wakefield
  4. "99 Red Balloons" - Goldfinger (Nena cover)
  5. "In The City" - The Jam
  6. "Shooting Stars" - Cauterize
  7. "Nonchalant" - Chapeaumelon
  8. "Scotty Doesn't Know" (Euro Version) - MC Jeffsky
  9. "Make My Dreams Come True" - Apollo 440
  10. "Du" - David Hasselhoff (Peter Maffay cover)
  11. "Les Promesses" - Autour De Lucie
  12. "I Love Marijuana" - Linval Thompson
  13. "Turn It Up" - Ugly Duckling
  14. "Get Loose" - The Salads
  • "England 5 - Germany 1" , a song by the seminal English Oi! band The Business plays on the hooligan bus trip to Paris. This song does not appear on the soundtrack.
  • "Ça plane pour moi", a song by Belgian musician Plastic Bertrand can be heard when the four friends first get on the train. This song does not appear on the soundtrack either.

[edit] Theme song

"Scotty Doesn't Know" is a song that was written exclusively for the movie. It is performed by the band Lustra (although commonly mis-credited to the band Sum 41), 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 ringtone.

[edit] Reception

The film was released in the United States and Canada on February 20, 2004 in 2,512 theaters. Over its opening weekend, the film grossed $6,711,384. It went on to gross $17,771,387 in the United States and Canada and $3,025,460 in other territories for a worldwide total of $20,796,847.[1]

On the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, the film received a 47% approval rating based on 111 reviews and a 23% rating based on 26 reviews from top critics.[2][3] On the similar site Metacritic, the film scored 45 out of 100 based on 30 reviews.[4]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Eurotrip (2004). Box Office Mojo. Retrieved on 2008-01-19.
  2. ^ Eurotrip. Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved on 2008-01-19.
  3. ^ Eurotrip - Cream of the Crop. Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved on 2008-01-19.
  4. ^ Eurotrip (2004): Reviews. Metacritic. Retrieved on 2008-01-19.

[edit] External links

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