The Trip to Italy

Actors Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, playing fictionalized versions of themselves, make a culinary tour of Italy, reviewing restaurants for a British newspaper while riffing off each other's foibles in a series of meals from Tuscany to Capri. Director Michael Winterbottom is credited as writer, but there's a sense that little was ever committed to paper; the movie feels almost completely improvised, especially during the dinner-table scenes that comprise most of the running time. It's an utterly plotless ramble, but a hilarious one, with a good, solid laugh every 75 seconds or so, and spiced with Brydon's uncanny impressions of everyone from Robert De Niro and Woody Allen to Sean Connery and Michael Caine. Like 2010's The Trip (which covered Northern England), the movie is edited from a six-part TV series.