The two of them appeared together, too, in Michael Winterbottom's Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, but you couldn't fill the Academy of Music with the people who saw that.
The Trip, which brought them to the Tribeca Film Festival last month and opened at the Ritz Five on Friday, might, however, turn this duo into certified stars - cult stars, anyway - on this side of the Atlantic. Think a Hope and Crosby road movie, only with English accents and a nonstop barrage of comic impressions and cinema references, and you have an inkling of what this sublimely funny film is like.
In fact, it was Winterbottom, the prolific director (The Killer Inside Me, A Mighty Heart, 24 Hour Party People), who, watching Brydon and Coogan riff in Tristram Shandy, had the idea to reteam them and see what flew.
In The Trip, Brydon and Coogan play Brydon and Coogan, fellow comedians and not-terribly-good friends who steer a Range Rover through the Lake District, stopping to sup in various posh gourmet spots. They'll take a seat, order some extravagant dishes, and then launch into wild improvisatory put-downs and competitive impression sessions. Brydon will do Michael Caine, say, and then Coogan will critique it and offer his own, and far superior (he believes), Caine interpretation. Then come Richard Burton, Woody Allen, Anthony Hopkins, Al Pacino, Roger Moore. There was no shooting script, no plot - just inspired lunacy.
"When Michael was trying to convince us to do this, I thought, well, a whole film with just that kind of stuff?" says Coogan. "I was very reluctant."
"We said no, twice," adds Brydon. "It took three lunches to convince us. . . . We thought, at worst, that it would be a noble failure, because it would be different. It will be brave. It will be experimental. It will be bold."
