If you liked The Trip—the 2010 highbrow bro-trip comedy with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon endlessly riffing their way around Northern England under the pretense of reviewing restaurants—you'll love The Trip to Italy, because sorry, Italy is just a thousand times prettier than England (even the Lake District). The shots here of winding cliffside roads and Mediterranean sailing are absurdly beautiful, especially accompanied by Verdi (and even accompanied by Alanis Morissette, which becomes a running joke as they sing along in the car). And the food, while nearly entirely peripheral and shown only fleetingly, looks incredible, more and more so as the men travel south. If you found The Trip somewhat annoying, as I did—their patter felt forced, competitive, and neurotic in a way that got less and less amusing—you should set that aside and consider Italy on its own merits. Coogan and Brydon seem to have less to prove now, possibly because they're getting older and wiser; unexpectedly, their fretting about aging and death make this film both sweeter and funnier than the last (as does their obsession with exile in the form of Byron and Shelley). Italy feels lighter than The Trip, as if the scenery and the sun illuminate the fact that getting older, and even the prospect of death, are just part of la dolce vita. (Coogan's glancing angst about his son and Brydon's about an infidelity also feel featherweight, and not in a bad way.) Also, the jokes are funnier. The sequence where Brydon does a voice for a victim of Pompeii who's ossified in a coffinlike glass display box is an absolute comedic gem, and this is a typical Brydon/Coogan exchange: "Where do you stand on Michael Bublé?" "His windpipe?" If you like it when they do impressions, those are countless here, from Clint Eastwood to Richard Burton—but Claire Keelan, in a very minor role, steals that show with a quick, spot-on Audrey Hepburn toward the end. by Bethany Jean Clement