EuroTrip

Eurotrip
Directed by	Jeff Schaffer
Produced by	Alec Berg Daniel Goldberg David Mandel Jackie Marcus
Starring	Scott Mechlowicz Jacob Pitts Michelle Trachtenberg Travis Wester
Distributed by	DreamWorks
Release dates	February 20, 2004
Running time	90 minutes
Language	English
Budget	~ US$25,000,000

EuroTrip is a 2004 American comedy film about a group of young Americans and their adventures traveling around Europe.

Synopsis

The premise of the story is the online friendship between Scotty (Scott Mechlowicz), from the USA, and Mieke (Jessica Boehrs), from Germany. Scott thinks that his penpal is male, and when Mieke finds out that Scotty was dumped by his unfaithful girlfriend, she wants to arrange a meeting with Scotty in the United States, prompting Scotty (who's drunk at this time) to call "him" a "sick German freak" and telling Mieke never to speak to him again. The next morning, his younger brother tells him that Mieke is a girl's name and that Mieke was in fact the hot girl in a picture Mieke sent and not the guy in the picture Scott assumed to be Mieke (Mieke is not, in fact, a German name but a Dutch one; the closest German equivalent would be Meike). He then sets out to travel to Germany to meet her, accompanied by his best friend, and meeting up with two of their other friends.

• (Presumably) Hudson, Ohio, United States: 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, Scott receives an email from his German penpal asking to have a meeting in America, but mistaking the name Mieke with the English Mike, he sends her an email 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 confused and blocks his e-mail address. Upon realizing she's actually a girl, Scott 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, Scott and his friend Cooper book passage on a courier jet.

• London, United Kingdom: 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 soccer hooligans (led by former British footballer Vinnie Jones, a staple in Guy Ritchie films) who chastise them for invading their privacy as it is a "Private members bar for the Manchester United football club". But after Scott successfully diffuses their anger by singing a modified version of ("9 to 5" by Sheena Easton), they are accepted.

• Paris, France: After being accepted by the Soccer 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. 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 busker 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 busker 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.

• France's northern coast: After a long train trip - during which the males of the group are somewhat molested and freaked out by a creepy Italian man - they end up at a quaint French town where they go to a nude beach. To their dismay, it is full of naked men like them looking for 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 must-needed stop along the way, where Cooper goes to "Club Vandersexxx" (which is -unknown to him- an especially brutal BDSM club) and has one hell of a 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 they were really in an ordinary Dutch bakery, much to their embarassment. While 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 identity, 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 how many time the driver repeats Berlin - but really is going "nowhere near Berlin". So they end up in Bratislava, where they are horrified by Eastern Europe. They talk to a Slovak (played by Rade Šerbedžija, another character like Vinnie Jones who was a main character in the movie Snatch by Guy Ritchie), and discover that there is no train coming, it 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 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, 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. Only then Cooper sees a young boy, Meike's stepbrother, Heinrich, acting like a Nazi Soldier 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 bannister 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 soccer hooligans from earlier in the movie come back 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, 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.

• Oberlin College, Ohio, USA: At the end of the movie, Scott is in college following the summer, where out of nowhere Mieke becomes his roommate, due to a another misunderstanding about her name. The movie ends with them kissing and Cooper trying over and over again to talk to Scott on the phone.

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

Berlin

• Walter Sittler – Mieke's father
• Adam Dotlacil – Heinrich

Vatican City

• Predrag Bjelac – Italian man
• Joel Kirby – Swiss Guard
• Jessica Boehrs – Mieke
• Patrick Malahide – Arthur Frommer
• Jack Marston – Pope John Paul II
• Mindy Sterling – Woman in confessional

Humour

Eurotrip's tagline was "no actual Europeans were harmed in the making of this film", and it is perhaps most notable for its many stereotypes of various European countries and their people. Prominent among them are:

• Hudson, Ohio looks nothing like it is portrayed in the movie.
• Eastern Europe, which is portrayed as poverty-stricken and cut off from the outside world where less than 2 US dollars will obtain one a stay at a Bratslavian presidential suite (Bratislava is visited by the group)
• The Netherlands, which are portrayed as very tolerant of drugs and prostitution (Amsterdam is visited) and people who seem to have never even heard about monogamy.
• British people, who are portrayed as drunken football hooligans who swear a lot. (However, the only English people we see are the drunken hooligans.)
• French people, who are portrayed as boring and stuffy (as shown by the long line at the Louvre and the mention of one at the Eiffel Tower, although many in line were presumably foreign tourists.)
• German people, who are portrayed to still have neo-Nazi tendencies, as Mieke's step-brother paints himself a Hitler moustache and goose-stepping around the apartment. A man in Mieke's apartment is also very blond and buff.
• Italian people, who are portrayed as homosexual, characterized by an Italian man in the friends' compartment who makes moves on Jamie, continually saying "scusi" (Italian for "excuse me").
• Not only poking fun at foreign nationalities, the American protagonists are inherently shown as being ignorant (Cooper believes that Germany and France "have always been allies."), boorish, or inappropriately hedonistic.

External links

• Official website
• EuroTrip at IMDb
• EuroTrip at Rotten Tomatoes
• EuroTrip at Box Office Mojo
• Lucy Lawless in Eurotrip