Review: 'Joy Ride' is unabashedly raunchy, uproariously funny and unexpectedly sweet — and Ashley Park is your next comedy star

If you have a high tolerance for raunchy humor, “Joy Ride” will put that tolerance to the test — and, if you find the hard-edged sexual jokes funny, you’ll last long enough to enjoy the sweet, heartfelt message of friendship, feminine empowerment and Asian-American identity underneath.

Audrey Sullivan (played by Ashley Park) has always struggled with her identity — as a Chinese-born woman adopted as a baby by white American parents (Annie Mumolo and David Denman). Luckily, when she was 5, her parents found a Chinese couple whose little girl, Lolo, soon became her best friend (played as an adult by comedian Sherry Cola).

Audrey is now a successful lawyer, on the verge of becoming a partner — if she can land a lucrative client on a business trip to Beijing. Lolo is along for the ride, as is her cousin (Sabrina Wu), nicknamed Deadeye for being expressionless to the point of catatonia. While in Beijing, Audrey plans to meet up with her college roommate, Kat (Stephanie Hsu, from “Everything Everywhere All at Once”), an actress who’s starring in a Chinese soap opera alongside her fiancé, Clarence (Desmond Chiam), who thinks Kat is a virginal Christian and doesn’t know about her numerous sexual exploits in college.

Lolo urges Audrey to call up the adoption agency that sent her to America, to see if she can find her birth mother. The search takes Audrey away from her client (played by comic Ronny Chieng), and onto a road trip in the country — where the misadventures for our four friends include an encounter with an American drug courier (Meredith Hagner), balloons of cocaine going into various orifices, a sexually charged meet-up with a basketball team, an attempt to board an airplane masquerading as a K-pop quartet, and revelations that upend Kat’s wedding plans and deepen Audrey’s identity crisis even further.

First-time director Adele Lim (who co-wrote “Crazy Rich Asians” and “Raya and the Last Dragon”), who shares story credit with writers Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao (who worked together on “Awkwafina Is Nora From Queens”), works on the idea that anything guys can do in a sex comedy, these four women can do, as the saying goes, backwards and in heels. Much of the humor is based on burning down Asian-American stereotypes, and showing these characters — particularly Lolo and Cat — as sex-positive adults who aren’t afraid to show their wild side.

The four actresses make a tight ensemble, squeezing maximum laughter out of the premise, and also showing a tender side in the brief moments the story turns serious. Of the four, though, Park (familiar to fans of “Emily in Paris” and “Girls5Eva”) is the standout, giving a leading lady-level performance that is by turns hilarious and heartwarming.

“Joy Ride” — what a generic title for such a character-specific situation comedy — has only enough of a filter to stay, barely, in the confines of an R rating, so if you’re easily offended, don’t bother buying a ticket. The rest of us will be in the theater, laughing our asses off.

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‘Joy Ride’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, July 7, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for strong and crude sexual content, language throughout, drug content and brief graphic nudity. Running time: 95 minutes.