The Observer has been back on the phone. Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan's article on fine dining around the north of England was so successful the paper wants a sequel. In Italy this time, in a Mini, on a whistlestop tour of Pompeii, Rome and the Amalfi coast. They'll be plied with the best food, wine and scenery in the world. And – true to form – they will moan, bitch and bicker throughout.
Michael Winterbottom's second tour around the quasi-fictional ins and outs of Coogan and Brydon's friendship arrives at Sundance a touch sun-drunk. The formula is the same – Coogan and Brydon play amplified versions of themselves, notionally on the literary trail of Byron and Shelley, but more interested in pottering between expensive restaurants, where they try to out-perform each other.
Since the first adventure their relationship has changed. They like each other more. Coogan's character is happier, less insecure and much more forgiving of Brydon's cheery mania, which is dialled up to the stars. There's barely a gap between Brydon's impersonations this time around. He morphs from his Pacino to his Brando to his Caine before his travel-mate has time to sigh. Yet the pairs' love of performance lends them a certain boorishness in the setting. Trading Roger Moore impressions on a drizzly day in England was funny; doing it by the beauty of the Italian coast makes them seem like embarrassing uncles on a family holiday.
Coogan and Brydon's relationship might be closer to reality this time, but there are some real world omissions that seem odd. The Trip made sport of Coogan's trouble breaking Hollywood, yet no mention is made of the Oscar-nominated Philomena, which was shot shortly before this and could have made an interesting meta-textual cameo. Instead Coogan's character has been informed that his LA-set medical drama, Pathology, has been scrapped after two seasons. He's not angry or bitter though, just philosophical, which isn't that funny. Meanwhile Brydon has netted an audition for a big part in a Michael Mann film, leading to a fantastically surreal scene in which he recites his lines in all the voices he knows, rolling through his back catalogue until he lands on a dead-eyed copy of Steve Coogan. "You won't get the part, because you're shit," says Coogan via Brydon. It's exactly the dark, desperate humour that this sequel needed more of.
That's not to suggest that The Trip in Italy doesn't have the scenes you'll be searching YouTube for long after release - they're just less obvious and less snappy. There's a great bit where they imagine a studio lackey asking Tom Hardy to make his Bane voice clearer on the set of The Dark Knight Rises ("Tom? We were just wondering if you could speak up a bit?" "MMMFUG GURGHMM FURGHHH?!") and a touching moment when Brydon as Michael Parkinson deconstructs Coogan, labelling him a 90s relic, a cultural artifact as relevant to popular culture as Oasis or cocaine. Coogan breaks character and laughs. Winterbottom sticks with it. For a moment, Coogan's really himself finding the real Rob Brydon funny. It's a lovely sequence, totally out of sync with the fiction, but full of spontaneity and joy.
Early in the film Coogan and Brydon debate whether going on second trip is a good idea. Coogan worries about second album syndrome, the inevitability of disappointment after a brilliant first run. In this regard, The Trip to Italy does what all sequels do. It delivers what we loved about the original on a bigger and broader scale. It's still fun hanging out with Winterbottom, Coogan and Brydon, but the laughs are more forced, the satire less sharp.
The Trip's brilliance was in the illusion of intimacy; we thought we were getting to know the petty reality of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon's mutual ambivalence. The Trip to Italy reveals – unsurprisingly – that they rather like each other. Winterbottom lets us further into their world than we wanted to be. We see more of the truth and have less fun because of it.
• Laura Barton goes on the set of The Trip to Italy
