The cult comedy duo of director Michael Winterbottom and actor Steve Coogan (24 Hour Party People) – along with their lovable third wheel Rob Brydon – must have decided they needed a holiday. Regrouping after 2005’s side-splitting Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, the trio have hit the road for a gastronomical tour of England’s picturesque Lake District.

Playing semi-fictionalised versions of themselves in this mostly improvised comedy, Coogan and Brydon are work colleagues who pair up rather awkwardly after Coogan’s gourmand girlfriend leaves him in the lurch. And while Coogan’s apparent ignorance of fine cuisine doesn’t bode too well for the commissioned newspaper feature, he and Brydon seem more than happy to while away the days gleefully bickering through a series of celebrity impersonations.

Whittled down from its original form as a six-part miniseries, The Trip has been trimmed of its foodie flavour in favour of a focus on Coogan’s midlife crisis. So in between the rip-roaringly funny impressions (featuring Michael Caine, James Bond, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro), Winterbottom and Coogan take a much more reflective look at a man personally and professionally adrift. Ultimately then, The Trip echoes Winterbottom’s keen portraiture in Genova perhaps more than the...