Less a movie than a collection of family-friendly platitudes rationed out at regular intervals, College Road Trip concerns overly protective police chief James (Martin Lawrence), who wants his daughter Melanie (Raven-Symoné) to attend college near their suburban Chicago home, despite her dreams of going east to Georgetown. Grudgingly, James spends a weekend driving Melanie to D.C. for her admission interview, encountering gratingly “wacky” obstacles such as karaoke-singing Asian tourists and dorky white people (led, appropriately, by Donny Osmond) along the way. Lawrence’s descent from hyperactive foulmouth to G-rated father figure has been in evidence for years now, but watching director Roger Kumble move from flawed but juicy projects like Cruel Intentions to pap like this is a depressing career development. The script, credited to two screenwriting duos, never ceases to remind us that any father-daughter difficulties can be settled with unconvincing heartfelt words over a treacly score or, in a pinch, a spontaneously choreographed song-and-dance number. It doesn’t matter if nobody in this movie behaves like a real person, College Road Trip says reassuringly, just so long as everybody hugs at the end. Speaking of the end, the tagline says it all: “They can’t get there fast enough.”

Review by Tim Grierson