#SOLOSTORIES: “Girls Trip” and “Joy Ride”
SoloStories is our feature in which we explore books, films and TV shows that show single women navigating their lives – but romance is not the main component.
The movies “Girls Trip” and “Joy Ride” share several things in common. They focus on a quartet of friends on a journey. They’re both incredibly raunchy. And the happy endings for their characters doesn’t mean marriage.
In the 2017 movie “Girls Trip,” four college friends (Regina Hall, Jada Pinkett Smith, Queen Latifah and Tiffany Hadish) reunite for the first time in years to attend EssenceFest in New Orleans. Three of them are single. The character Ryan (Hall) appears happily married – but it’s not what it seems.
The women take charge of their freedom and party, drink, flirt, have sex and pee (not a typo) their way through Bourbon Street. But there are fractures in their friendship and in Ryan’s marriage. While delivering a speech, Ryan realizes that her freedom and dignity is more important to her.
“I was willing to accept being treated as less than I am. And I know I'm not alone in this. I know that there are a lot of us who stay in bad relationships because we have convinced ourselves that being disrespected is better than being alone. But we shouldn't fear being alone, because there is power in rediscovering your own voice. I forgot that years before I was ... Stewart's wife, I was Ryan. A girl with her own ambitions and her own dreams. But luckily... my girls... my girls... reminded me of that. Flossy Posse. They reminded me of my own worth... And that there was a time that I didn't fear anything. No one has the power to shatter your dreams unless you give it to them. … And I refuse to give anyone that power again.”
The speech may bring something in your eye.
The 2023 movie “Joy Ride” is another movie with some moments that may make you cry. Audrey (Ashley Park) travels to China on a business trip and ends up with her friends (Stephanie Hsu, Sherry Cola, Sabrina Wu). They encounter some misadventures along the way, some of which involve an American drug dealer, a basketball team and KPOP fans.
Like “Girls Trip,” the women do not hold back on their sexuality. And they also face some hard truths about their lives when Audrey searches for her birth mother and the stress from their travels become too much.
By the end of the movie, one of them is preparing for a wedding and the three others are unattached. In “Girls Trip,” Ryan is seen flirting with another guy, but the women are all single at the end of the movie.
In both movies, their happily ever after is their friendship and the ability to make their own choices.