Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon Survey the Summer Movie Scene With Movieline

UK actors, comics and longtime pals Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan (pictured L-R) last week paid a visit to the Tribeca Film Festival, which hosted the American premiere of their new road movie The Trip. But that didn't mean they weren't game for a lightning round of summer-movie first impressions.

Charting the duo's five-day tour of inns, restaurants and nature around the north of England, The Trip reunites Coogan and Brydon with director Michael Winterbottom (A Cock and Bull Story) for a roundly amusing, wildly improvisatory, and often surprisingly poignant glimpse at two friends, two careers and two fathers for whom sharing the same car hardly means sharing the same path.

The Trip itself is a summer film, opening June 10 in limited release and arriving June 22 on VOD. We'll have more about their movie closer to that time, but meanwhile, Coogan and Brydon spent a few minutes digesting some of the season's bigger, blockbustery titles with Movieline.

Where do you stand on Thor, directed by Kenneth Branagh?

BRYDON: Oh, Thor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That looks good.

COOGAN: Oh, that's interesting.

BRYDON: The word on the street is good!

COOGAN: Rob's doing a play with [Branagh].

BRYDON: I'm doing a play with him in the autumn. He showed me a little assembly of a trailer a while ago. But I'm so pleased for him, because the advance word is very good, it seems. The reviews are just coming in, aren't they? And they're very good.

COOGAN: Really? Well, I'm pleased for him.

BRYDON: He's a brilliant talent. And what a nice man!

Where do you stand on the Pirates of the Caribbean series?

BRYDON: I'm not very familiar with that. I saw the first one, but it wasn't for me.

COOGAN: I'm not really familiar with it. I think it's good, and it's great what Johnny Depp does in it, but I think it's like all things that have slightly become victims of their own success. And partly because they haven't asked me to be in any.

BRYDON: [Laughs]

COOGAN: I do wish failure on things that haven't attempted to reach out to me.

BRYDON: Right. "Why haven't you had the decency to ask me?"

Harry Potter?

COOGAN: Harry Potter. My daughter said, "It's embarrassing, Dad, that you've never been in any of the Harry Potter films. It's like there's something wrong with you." And so I have to say, when I see those I go, "Why haven't they asked me?" And so I think, "Well, sod them! I want their films to fail miserably." But they probably won't. They'll probably be very successful! But I do wish failure on people who won't work with me.

BRYDON: And that's a nice quality of yours.

COOGAN: But Johnny Depp's great in [Pirates]. He's very, very watchable and is fun to watch. But there's always a danger with comics. You know when you see a TV series or a movie that's fresh? As soon as people reprise that role, you can tell in the performance sometimes that they're aware that the character they're doing is successful.

BRYDON: Yes, yes. You've got to really hold it back.

COOGAN: It affects the performance. There's a certain element of self-congratulation. I'm not saying that Johnny Depp is doing that, but I'm saying that that is a problem that often occurs.

OK, one more: Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

BRYDON: Ohh, I like the trailer!

COOGAN: I'm into Planet of the Apes. That is something that does appeal to me.

BRYDON: Have you seen the trailer?

COOGAN: No.

BRYDON: Oh! It's good.

COOGAN: Really?

BRYDON: But someone pointed out that it's Rise of the Planet of the Apes -- not the Monkeys. And there are chimps in the trailer. They're chimps, not apes.

Is that a dealbreaker?

BRYDON: Not for me. But somebody pointed out they're not apes.

COOGAN: So what's it called?

BRYDON: Rise of the Planet of the Apes. But in the trailer there are monkeys. Chimps! Chimps, not apes. It should be Rise of the Planet of the Simians or something.

COOGAN: Hang on. [Long pause]

BRYDON: You're thinking Roddy McDowell [from the original Planet of the Apes] was a chimp, aren't you?

COOGAN: No...

BRYDON: James Franco's in it! It looks good. It looks very good.

COOGAN: I do like the first one.

BRYDON: No, but this is how it all began.

COOGAN: Oh!

BRYDON: They tell you how it began. It looks fascinating.

Check out all of Movieline's Summer Preview coverage, including interviews, features, and photos!

[Photo: Getty Images]