EuroTrip is a 2004 film that is notable for being one of the last teen sex comedies to come out during the late 1990s-early 2000s boom.
Scotty gets dumped by his girlfriend on graduation. He then goes on a trip to Berlin to meet his German pen pal Mi(e)ke (pronounced Mee-kah, a German feminine name aus Deutschland) and declare his everlasting love for her. He is accompanied by his sassy friend Cooper and "worst twins ever" Jenny and Jamie. There are many wacky cameos, including Matt Damon, Vinnie Jones, Lucy Lawless, Fred Armisen, Patrick Malahide and Joanna Lumley. Also starring Michelle Trachtenberg.
EuroTrip breaks the mold of many teen comedies, in that it never actually crosses the line from 'kind of goofy' to 'gross slapstick', and actually succeeds in inserting a bit of warmth and heart into the story. It's also one of the few teen comedies in which the token geek is the one who gets the happiest ending.
It was filmed entirely in Prague.
Despite the similar title and theme, as well as sharing producers; it has no narrative connection to 2000's Road Trip.
Previews: Trailer
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This film provides examples of:
- Actually Quite Catchy: Though the first time hearing it was incredibly traumatizing for Scotty, he later admits that the song Scotty Doesn't Know (in which the singer goes into great detail about how Fiona cheated on Scotty with him) is pretty catchy.
- Adolf Hitlarious: When the main characters visit Mieke's home, Mieke's younger brother is shown imitating Hitler and goosestepping through the apartment without his parents noticing.
- Advertised Extra: The Absinthe fairy is shown throughout the marketing but only appears in two scenes of the film.
- All Germans Are Nazis: Well, the Aryan 5-year-olds are.
- All There in the Script: Mieke's last name is revealed as "Schmidt", as shown in a scene where Scotty tries to reply back to her after she blocked his e-mail address, and in a deleted scene, where they meet the Creepy Italian Guy, who is the supervisor for a touring company in the Vatican City.
- Amusing Injuries: Cooper getting brutally sodomized and having his testicles electrocuted. If this weren't a comedy, he'd probably be traumatized for life.
- Animated Credits Opening: Including, as Leonard Maltin's movie guide points out, a vomit joke.
- Annoying Younger Sibling: Scott's little brother Bert. He's annoying for being a dick towards Scott.
- Artistic License – Economics:
- The exchange rate in Slovakia is taken to ridiculous levels, albeit clearly for comedic purposes. Scott flips one of the servants an American nickel which he proclaims "A nickel, I'm rich, I quit". One wonders if they have the Slovakian equivalent of millions of dollars in a couple of US Dollars. The rich man, Christoph Jenny meets happens to own the club in Bratislava that they are in. If their pocket change is worth so much it's assumed that this man may be rich enough to buy the entire country.
- A realistic portrayal of hyperinflation wouldn't make the American currency more valuable in the way the movie implies, the value of the goods/services is somewhat independent from a currency value. Given everything else equal, a good/service offered in the U.S that cost US$1000 would still cost somewhere near that amount for that exact same quality in the other country that has a terrible currency value. To put this in another perspective, something that costs US$1000 in a particular country's currency value would still cost US$1000 in that currency value after that country goes through a severe bout of hyperinflation.
- Artistic License – Geography: Played for Laughs. Almost all of it.
- The opening credits show a map of Europe and all of Ireland is covered by the UK flag.
- Played for laughs with Cooper's deplorable ignorance of European geography.Cooper: Europe is like the size of the Eastwood Mall. We can walk to Berlin from there [London].
Cooper: Relax, Paris is practically a suburb of Berlin. It's a nothing commute. - There is one comment about the "island of England."
- They also pass the Black Forest and apparently, Heidelberg on the way from Bratislava to Berlin. Bratislava is not in France.
- There's also multiple scenes involving the table/condiment "map" set up near the beginning: when they head from Berlin to Rome, it's shown on another table that, were one to line it up with a map, would probably be closer to Russia.
- On a smaller scale, the layout of Vatican City is all scrambled up, with (apparently) the Vatican Museum adjoining the papal apartments, the fireplace in the pope's study leading to the Sistine Chapel's chimney, and the study itself apparently opening up to the center balcony of St Peter's Basilica.
- Being able to enter and leave Slovakia without their passports, as passport checks at Slovakia's borders were not abolished until 2007note .
- Artistic License – History: Played for laughs in one quote.
- Artistic License – Linguistics: Played for laughs.
- The unpronounceable safeword in Club Vandersexxx (Flüggåɘnk∂€čhiœßøl∫ên) contains letters from every European languagenote , complete with umlauts and severals "ø"s and "å"s. Club Vandersexxx is in Amsterdam, where the primary language is Dutch, which uses just the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet plus "ë" and "ï" (ironically the latter two, complicated, characters don't even appear in the safe word). Included in the word's nonsensical orthography are non-linguistic and even calculus signs "€" (the euro sign), "∂" (the partial differential sign), and "∫" (the IPA letter "esh" or the integral sign). It's entirely possible that the madam has done this on purpose because Cooper is an American.
- "Mieke" is actually a Dutch namenote . It's used much more rarely in German and Europeans wouldn't first think of a German girl when hearing it. In the movie it's presented as a typical German name. The writers likely just went with it because it was a non-English female name that could be mistaken for a male name by English speakers when read off an email.
- Artistic License – Sports: While finding a Manchester United fanclub in London isn't totally unrealistic, the odds of stumbling across one of them instead of a fan club of Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur or West Ham — or even one of the smaller clubs like Charlton Athletic, Crystal Palace, Queens Park Rangers, Leyton Orient, Millwall, (A.F.C.) Wimbledon, Brentford, or Barnet — are pretty astronomical.note ).
- Astronomical Exchange Rate: The crew winds up in a nasty part of Eastern Europe, stranded, wallets missing, and with only $1.83 between them. They live like kings. And when they tip a hotel steward a nickel, he gleefully announces that he'll now be able to open his own hotel.
- As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Played With. If you make use of the Freeze-Frame Bonus, you can read the letters between Scotty and Mieke in full, and those are in rather correct (if a bit unnatural due to the translation from English) German. However, German has no "zussamen" word that Scotty looks up in the dictionarynote - and the freeze-frame reveals that it's not even in the letter where he supposedly lifted it from!
- Bait-and-Switch: In most teen comedies of the day, Jamie would have been the Butt-Monkey who endures the Amusing Injuries and indignities that Cooper goes through whereas Cooper would have been the "cool" Karma Houdini who gets the happy ending that Jamie gets in this film, a film-length refusal of the stereotypes of the time.
- Big "NO!":
- When Scotty finds out Mieke is a girl, after he sent an angry e-mail to her.
- When Jamie saw Jenny about to take off her clothes, showing off her bikini, in front of a hundred naked men.
- Black Comedy Rape: The Club Vandersexxx scene. Cooper suffers electric torture on his genitals and an (implied) anal rape, which is Played for Laughs.
- Bowdlerise: In the trailer, the Absinthe fairy says "That is just wrong" instead of "That is some pretty fucked up shit."
- Brainless Beauty: Candy, the girl in the hot tub in the party at the start of the film. Despite going to same school as Cooper and knowing him and exactly what he is like ("You're a pig Cooper!") Cooper still manages to convince her to remove her bikini top and rub her breasts to get rid of a (non existent) smudge. Even Cooper seems momentarily taken aback that Candy was dumb enough to fall for that.
- Bratty Half-Pint: Scotty's little brother.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: While peeking through the bushes at the topless women in the hot tub at the post-graduation party, Cooper comments, "Well there's your R-rating right there", at which point the scene cuts to a clear shot of one of the aforementioned women.
- Brick Joke:
- When Cooper decides to visit a sex club in Amsterdam, he mentions that Club Vandersexxx gives every visitor a free T-shirt. The next day, after a night that definitely didn't go as planned, he's wearing a shirt with their logo.
- A failed example. Cooper says that in Europe, they have "...lesbians with dildos in orange juice commercials." However, this line was deleted and replaced with just "topless chicks in orange juice commercials", so when Cooper sees an orange juice commercial that does in-fact have lesbians with dildos, it comes off more as a
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment. The joke's back in the PPV cable and unrated versions. - "This isn't where I parked my car!"
- Britain Is Only London: Played straight and subverted. London is the only part of Britain that the characters visit, but a big part of that scene involves them hanging out with a Manchester United fan club (which you aren't that likely to find in London. Not impossible, but not that likely, and even less likely to be filled with Cockneys), so...
- The Cameo: Quite a few, most notably Matt Damon and an uncredited Jeffrey Tambor (they were filming The Brothers Grimm and Hellboy in Prague at the time and Matt Damon went to college with the producers), and Diedrich Bader as a thief.
- Catchphrase:Cooper: This isn't where I parked my car!
- The Creepy Italian Guy likes to say "Mi scusi!" a lot.
- Character’s Most Hated Song: Shortly after Scotty discovered that his girlfriend Fiona was cheating on him, the boy she was cheating with wrote a song about it titled "Scotty Doesn't Know", which discussed the affair in graphic detail. This upset Scotty greatly, especially as the song went on to become an international hit.
- Chekhov's Gun: Jamie's Leica M7 camera. Near the end, he sells it so Scotty can afford to travel to Vatican City to meet Mieke.
- Comically Missing the Point: Jenny is angry at Cristoph for sleeping with other women when he's married. He tries to change her mind by saying that he also sleeps with men.
- Commie Land: Practically everything mildly east of Germany is shown as this.
- Covers Always Lie: See that hot blonde girl on the page image? That's Mieke, the girl who kicks off the plot of the movie, and only has a few fleeting appearances onscreen (mostly in dream sequences) before finally being introduced in the last 15 minutes.
- Cymbal-Banging Monkey: Either the most horrific or most hilarious use of one ever.
- Depraved Bisexual: Cristoph, who is married but that doesn't stop him from sleeping with other women and men.
- Depraved Homosexual: The Creepy Italian Guy.
- Distracted by the Sexy: Jamie gets robbed at knife-point in Amsterdam, but he's too busy getting a blowjob from a local girl to put up much of a fight.
- Double Standard Rape: Female on Male / Male On Male: Cooper is sexually tortured and anally raped by a very depraved Dutch dominatrix along with her two henchmen. There's no way they would have put Jenny (or any woman) in that situation (at least not with it portrayed as amusing).
- Dramatic Slip: Subverted. One of them falls, says "Go on without me!".... and then, when he realizes nobody's helping him, gets up again and keeps running.
- Ear Worm: "Scotty Doesn't Know" is acknowledged as a very catchy song, and it becomes a Running Gag that it keeps popping up, to the point a nightclub in Europe is playing a remix of it.Cooper: You gotta admit it, it's a really catchy tune.
- Emasculated Cuckold: Scotty every time he hears "Scotty Doesn't Know", but most of all the first time, when he watches it performed live as the singer proceeds to make out with Fiona on stage.
- Europeans Are Kinky: So many examples, from Club Vandersexxx to the Creepy Italian Guy to the Depraved Bisexual who tries to pick up Jenny.
- In the deleted scene, Jenny fails to hitch a ride by showing her breasts because Europeans are so used to breasts as to be unfazed by them.
- Exit, Pursued by a Bear: The guy wearing a French soccer shirt who gets chased off by the Football Hooligans when they arrive in Paris.
- Fake High: The group enter a restaurant in Amsterdam and order what they think are hash brownies, starting to hallucinate wildly until they're told by the waiter they're eating regular brownies.
- Fan Disservice: The characters go to a nude beach, expecting to see beautiful naked women. They find hundreds of flabby, ugly male tourists who went to look for beautiful women too (it seems the actual beautiful women only go to the beach when the tourists aren't around). Even better: The beautiful women actually hang out around a local landmark that tourists usually avoid due to it being "boring", and that one of the main characters had initially suggested visiting, only to be ignored. Truth in Television as anyone visiting a nudist beach with expectations like these will be disappointed. Naturally, as nudist beaches are not for show purposes, not only the beautiful people go there but all sorts of people, most of whom you really don't want to see naked. It's also true that only foreigners unfamiliar with the concept would have such an idea, for the locals are used to see naked people and don't think of it as extraordinary. Heck, in Europe you'll see topless women even in parks and public swimming pools. And in Orange Juice ads, obviously...
- Fanservice Extra: An entire nude beach full of topless young women briefly gets shown. The orange juice commercial has two nude women making out as well.
- Football Hooligans: Led by Vinnie Jones. However, their being fans of Manchester United in London isn't a case of Britain Is Only London— it's actually a stealth joke because many normal UK football fans believe that MU fans don't actually live in Manchester and only like them because they're successful.
- Freestate Amsterdam: Played straight and subverted: The brownies contain no marijuana, they were just hyperventilating and imagining it. The bakers seem offended by the presumption they sold hash brownies because they're rastafarian; they're just a humble, normal bakery.
- Funny Background Event: The Hitler-impersonating German kid goose-stepping around while Scott talks to Mieke's father.
- Geeky Turn-On: The girl at the camera shop spends a few minutes with Jamie discussing his Leica M7note , and then invites him to join her out back for her smoke break. Oral sex and a mugging ensue.
- Gender-Blender Name: Sets off the entire plot. Scotty doesn't understand that Mieke is a girl's name in Germany and presumes the penpal he's been emailing for months is a guy named Mike. Thus when "Mike" offers to meet with Scotty in person in response to hearing about his break-up, Scotty thinks he's a sexual predator. Once he finds out the truth, she's blocked his email, so he sets off to Europe to make things right.
- Gone Horribly Wrong...or Right: Cooper's visit to Vandersexxx club. It's difficult to tell which, but he definitely didn't have fun.
- Gratuitous English: One of the two major hints that Scotty's dream about Mieke and Jan having sex is that their entire conversation is in English, as opposed to German. The other is Mieke's Stripperiffic outfit.
- Groin Attack: In France, the gang encounter a street-performing French robot, which freaks Cooper out. Scotty teases him about it, by showing off some moves unwittingly upstaging the robot in the process. The robot is provoked, and gets into a humorous fight with Scotty, which ends Scotty kneeing the robot where the sun don't shine, causing it to collapse in pain.
- "The Hero Sucks" Song: "Scotty Doesn't Know", especially since the singer and Fiona are well aware Scotty is there and that they are giving him Too Much Information.
- Hilarious Outtakes: Played during the credits.
- Hitchhiker's Leg: There's a scene in which Jenny tries flashing drivers when attempting to hitchhike. It doesn't work. It got deleted in the theatrical release, but
it was in all the trailers, on cable, and in the European release of the movie and during the credits, with Jenny actually jumping up and down and shouting while topless as more drivers go by. (That she has her back to the camera in the process may qualify as more of the film's Fan Disservice.) - Intoxication Ensues:
- The "Green Fairy" absinthe they try gets them so drunk that they're hallucinating after one shot. May be due to the widespread - but false - perception that Absinthe contains substances other than alcohol in sufficient quantity to induce hallucinations.
- Played with in the Amsterdam Bakery scene where Scotty and Jenny try to order drugged Hash Brownies and almost immediately show signs that they're tripping. After Jenny gets the munchies and starts stealing food from the table next to them while Scotty starts taking his shirt off and talking about the time he accidentally saw a gay porno,the baker tells them the bakery doesn't sell hash brownies and they're acting like jackasses over nothing.
- In Vino Veritas: The Twins when they visit the bar in Bratislava — leads to Kissing Under the Influence and Twincest.
- I Need to Go Iron My Dog: Cooper frequently says "This isn't where I parked my car..."
- It's Not You, It's Me: Although, seconds later, Fiona retracts this and insist that it is in-fact Scotty's fault. Considering it's a Minor Flaw, Major Breakup her claim is debatable.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Coop may be a snarky, perverted slacker, but he loves his friends. He even gives Jamie a big bear hug when they part ways.
- Also, the leader of the Manchester United Fan Club, played by Vinnie Jones. He's huge, gruff and intimidating, but warms to the gang quickly and helps them out, showing himself to be more of a Boisterous Bruiser than anything.
- Just Train Wrong: Regardles of where the group was traveling, if it was by train it was always a ČDnote train hauled by their class 751 "Frowning" diesel no less. And while technically it would be possible to have this engine on most European tracks, the safety systems of many (especially western) countries would have severe objections against that, as there would be no way of detecting this train on a particular line which would cause a rather high risk of accident. And even though nowadays ETCSnote is quite common on most main European lines, only certain locomotives are equipped with compatible devices and class 751 definitely isn't one of them. Well at least they made Czech railfans happy . . . probably.
- Karma Houdini:
- Donnie and Fiona. They cheat on Scott for a year, then reveal this to him in the most public way imaginable, both clearly taking pleasure in humiliating him. Not only are they never punished for this, but Donnie gets a successful music career out of it. Though Scotty is definitely better off with Mieke.
- Cooper not only doesn't get fired for skipping a week of work during an important assignment without telling anyone (his coworker gets all the blame) but gets promoted, though entirely due to Rule of Funny.
- Karmic Jackpot: Jamie selling his camera to take Scotty to Rome to see Mieke. It starts a series of events that ends with him getting hired to tour all of Europe's museums.
- Kissing Under the Influence: Goes hand in hand with the Twincest with Jenny and Jaime thanks to a bottle of Absinthe.
- Laser Sight: In the unrated version, the massive chainsaw dildo has one for no particular reason, shining a red dot on Cooper's butt before the Ass Shove.
- Making Love in All the Wrong Places: Scotty has sex with Mieke in a confessional, of all places, inside the Vatican (even while a woman comes to confession, with several people outside as well), and they somehow get away with this.
- Mile-High Club: Cooper and Jenny go into the airplane bathroom to do it at the end.
- Mistaken for Gay: When Scotty realizes that Mieke is actually a girl, it causes some confusion:Scott: I'm in love with my pen pal! I'm in love with Mike!Cooper: Okay, okay. You know what? I was actually expecting this. And frankly, listen, I'm flattered that you picked me to come out to first. And don't worry about telling your folks, cause, eh, I think they already know.Scott: No, you idiot, Mike is a girl!Cooper: No, no, no, I get it, yeah. He's the girl, you're the girl. Sometimes you're both the girl. Right, right? That's hot. But, you know, whatever works for you. I'm not gonna judge it.
- Ms. Fanservice:
- Michelle Trachtenberg has definitely grown into her looks (the first time we see her she's bending over in tight jeans), but it takes a long time for the other characters to realize. Even after she flashes passing drivers in a bid to get them a ride (it doesn't work).
- The girl in the hot tub, who gets tricked into toplessness and rubbing her breast for an extended period.
- Mieke, Scotty's German love interest, is quite attractive, and is shown topless in a fantasy sequence. Also while having sex with him.
- Multiple Endings/Bittersweet Ending: The DVD has an alternative ending (also in the original script found on the DVD) that shows Mieke rejecting Scott, asking "Did you expect me to suddenly fall in love with you?" However, Mieke does give Scotty her new e-mail address, allowing Scotty to keep writing to her again. Subverted later, as in the theatrical version, Mieke still becomes Scotty's roommate in college.
- Mushroom Samba: Subverted, see Freestate Amsterdam above. Also double-subverted when the boys are under the hallucinogenic effects of absinthe: they complain it's not working, and then ask the green fairy what he thinks.
- My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels: Scott's German is quite poor, to the point that he doesn't realise that Mieke was a girl all along despite the fact that he's been emailing her for quite a while. There's also his conversations with the truck driver while trying to hitch a ride to Berlin, not realising that the driver is going as far away from Berlin as possible.
- No Name Given:
- Fred Armisen's character is only known as the "Creepy Italian Guy".
- The Absinthe Fairy.
- One Dialogue, Two Conversations: Jamie is receiving a blowjob from a sexy clerk behind a camera store in Amsterdam when a mugger approaches him from behind to demand his wallet at knifepoint. Since the girl is concealed by a dumpster from the mugger's line of sight, he's rather weirded out when Jamie doesn't care, gives him his wallet, then makes various suggestive comments like "Yeah, you take all of it, you dirty girl!"
- One of the Boys: Jenny in the beginning is regarded by Cooper as not a girl, instead being "just a cool guy with long hair".
- Placebo Effect: Scotty and Jenny order some brownies from a bakery in Amsterdam run by a Dreadlock Rasta. They're stoned out of their minds...until the Dreadlock Rasta informs them that they're not hash brownies.
- Refuge in Audacity: A lot of the movie, but especially "Scotty Doesn't Know":"I did her on his birthday..."
- For context: Fiona and her lover don't just tell Scotty that they've been having an affair. The boyfriend writes and performs with his band a full song (at the graduation party, no less) all about their affair and various sex acts, all to the refrain of Scotty (who is in the audience) not knowing anything.
- Ridiculous Exchange Rates: The movie fails economics forever by depicting the Slovakian koruna as this, when in fact its last exchange rate was 1 dollar = 22 koruna. Slovakia's subsequent adoption of the euro in 2009 makes the depiction even stupider.note
- Road Trip Plot: The film has four teens on a trip through Europe.
- R-Rated Opening: One of the first scenes has a rocker sing about frank sexual acts, teens drinking beer and Cooper looking at a naked woman by a pool. Cooper lampshades this.
- Ruritania: Practically everything mildly east of Germany is shown as this.
- Running Gag: The song "Scotty Doesn't Know" pops up several times during the film. There are "Scotty Doesn't Know" cell phone ringtones (which Cooper has), and there's even a techno remix of the song playing in the Eastern European nightclub.
- Say My Name: Scott yells out Fiona's name as she breaks up with him.
- Scenery Censor: Played straight with the three male protagonists, averted with the ugly nude beach tourists.
- Sex Tourism: Cooper's main purpose with the trip.
- Satellite Love Interest: Aside from being Scott's ideal girlfriend, Mieke doesn't get any characterization whatsoever.
- Shout-Out:
- Madame Vandersexxx's male servants are named Hans and Gruber.
- Cooper calls Jamie C3PO.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: The football hooligans, who, according to Cooper, are on a whole new level of swearing compared to Americans.
- During the end credits, a deleted scene is shown with Vinnie Jones swearing at other drivers from his double-decker bus for so long that it tires him out.
- The Smurfette Principle: Jenny is the one girl in the main foursome. Cooper even says he thinks of her as a guy at first as she always hangs out with them.
- The Stinger: Candy, the hot tub girl who spends most of her screen time rubbing one of her sizeable breasts because Cooper tells her she has something on it that hasn't come off yet, asks "Is it off now?" (Cooper: "No. Keep rubbing it.")
- Surprise Incest: Jenny and Jamie begin drunkenly making out in an eastern European nightclub. When they open their eyes and see each other, they both react with abject horror.Absinthe Fairy: That is some pretty fucked-up shit. Can you say "what the fuck did I do last night?"
- Stoners Are Funny: Subverted when Scotty and Jenny go to a bakery in Amsterdam to get space cakes (brownies laced with hash). Scotty starts freaking out and believes himself to be having a bad trip, until the cook informs him that he's been eating regular brownies with no hash in them. An embarrassed Scotty quietly sits back down in his chair.
- This Is Gonna Suck; When Jamie gushes about how they are seeing history in the making after Scotty and Cooper accidentally make it seem like the Pope has died and his successor has already been elected, Jenny seems to realize what is really going on. She wearily says that they are more likely to see an arrest in the making.
- Toplessness from the Back: In the extended deleted scene with the gang trying to hitch a ride to Berlin, Jenny partially flashes by lifting her shirt, which because she's wearing a bra is shown from the front. When she takes the bra-and eventually her shirt-off though, the camera cuts to behind her and it stays that way as she's jumping topless and lassoing the shirt. If Michelle Trachtenberg had had her 18th birthday before the scene's filming, this would likely have been averted.
- Trailers Always Spoil: Cooper is seen playing with the Pope's hat is first shown in the trailer.
- Twincest:Cooper: Here's a fun fact: You made out with your sister, man!
- Two Decades Behind: Bratislava is depicted as being still pretty much a communist bloc country. Tibor repeatedly makes dated pop culture references and notes that Miami Vice is the number one new show being broadcast.
- "Ugly American" Stereotype: The film's portrayal of American tourists in Europe: idiotic stumbling youths.
- Unrated Edition: Every picture on the back of its cover contains nudity, with the word "Unrated" in place of a Censor Box.
- Waxing Lyrical: When the Pope's hat catches fire while Cooper is wearing it, Scotty tries to warn him, but Cooper mistakes it for Scotty quoting 2 Live Crew's "The Roof Is On Fire."
- Wild Teen Party: The party at the start of the movie after the high school graduation.
