I’m not really sure there is anything to say about the family-friendly Disney comedy College Road Trip. In fact, the less I write the less I will probably get annoyed at myself for actually sitting through the whole darn thing. The reality is this: Fans of Raven Symoné, her television show “That’s So Raven” or any of the myriad other Disney Channel sitcoms, most of them under the age of 12, are probably going to be extremely happy with this movie; it’s just everyone else who is going to have an abominable time.

Martin Lawrence and Raven Simone in Walt Disney Pictures' College Road Trip

In other words, I am not this picture’s audience. Neither are parents. Nor are older siblings or pre-teen brothers and sisters. We will sit in the theater as if stuck in purgatory, damned to 80-plus minutes of tired comedic shenanigans and decibel-screeching tomfoolery the likes of which almost too horrific to even imagine.

But the target audience is going to eat it up. The kids in the preview audience laughed when the chess playing pig destroyed some random woman’s lavish wedding, they giggled when a giant police SUV went crashing down a country hillside, they shrieked in hysterics when their girl Raven and her equally cartoon-faced costar Martin Lawrence catapulted themselves from the back of an airplane. They loved just about every godforsaken minute, the pain I felt in weirdly acute symmetry with their cascading waves of seemingly unending laughter.

The plot, what there is of one, concerns overprotective small town police chief father James Porter (Lawrence) escorting his high school graduating daughter Melanie (Symoné) college touring road trip doing all he can to sabotage her Georgetown dreams so she’ll attend a school closer to home. Along the way they encounter unusual hardships, a stowaway younger brother and another loopily loony dad (Donny Osmond) with a thing for show tunes. Familial bonding mixed with gobs of comedic hilarity ensues. 

Look, I realize a movie like College Road Trip isn’t rocket science, but does it really have to play to such a dimwittedly low level that non-kid audiences are going to be in pain watching it? Recent films like The Spiderwick Chronicles and Penelope certainly prove otherwise and yet Disney, the supposed purveyor of all that is supposedly good and wholesome in the world of family viewing, can’t seem to do the same. Consider yourself warned.

Film Rating: ê1/2 (out of 4)

Additional Links:

-  College Road Trip Theatrical Trailer