EuroTrip

EuroTrip is a 2004 American teen sex comedy film directed by Jeff Schaffer, from a screenplay he wrote with Alec Berg and David Mandel. The film was produced by The Montecito Picture Company and distributed by DreamWorks Pictures. It stars Scott Mechlowicz, Jacob Pitts, Michelle Trachtenberg, and Travis Wester.

Mechlowicz portrays Scotty Thomas, a recent high school graduate from Ohio who travels across Europe in search of his German pen pal, Mieke (Jessica Boehrs). Accompanied by his friend Cooper (Pitts) and twin siblings Jenny and Jamie (Trachtenberg and Wester), Scotty's quest takes him to England, France, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Germany, and Italy, encountering awkward, humorous, and embarrassing situations along the way.

EuroTrip was released in theaters on February 20, 2004. It received mixed reviews from critics and underperformed at the box office, grossing $22.6 million against a $25 million budget. It gained popularity through its home video release and eventually attained a cult classic status. It is considered a spiritual successor to the 2000 DreamWorks release Road Trip, but was not originally intended to serve as such, with the original title being Ugly Americans. Before release, DreamWorks deliberately changed the film's title to EuroTrip, in order to capitalize on the success of Road Trip.

Plot

In the town of Hudson, Ohio, Scotty Thomas is dumped by his girlfriend, Fiona, immediately following his high school graduation in 2004. With his best friend, Cooper Harris, Scotty attends a graduation party that evening, where the band performs a song "Scotty Doesn't Know", detailing the affair Fiona was having with the band's singer, Donny. Scotty returns home drunk and angry and reads an email from his German pen pal, Mieke—whom Scotty calls "Mike"—expressing sympathy for Scotty and suggesting they meet in person. Cooper suggests that "Mike" may be a sexual predator and Scotty tells Mieke to stay away from him. Scotty's younger brother, Bert, informs him that "Mieke" is actually a common German feminine name. Realizing Mieke is a girl and he has feelings for her, Scotty tries to contact her again, but she blocks his email address. Scotty decides to travel to Europe with Cooper to find Mieke and apologize in person.

Scotty and Cooper first arrive in London, where they befriend a Manchester United football hooligan firm, led by Mad Maynard. After a night of drinking, Scotty and Cooper wake up on a bus on their way to Paris with the hooligans. In Paris, they meet up with their classmates, Jenny and Jamie, fraternal twins who are touring Europe together. Jenny and Jamie decide to accompany Scotty and Cooper to find Mieke in Berlin. The group travels to Amsterdam, where Jamie is robbed while receiving oral sex in an alley, losing everyone's money, passports, and train tickets. They attempt to hitchhike to Berlin, but due to a language misunderstanding, they end up in Bratislava. Finding a great exchange rate with the U.S. dollar, the group goes to a nightclub. Drunk on absinthe, Jenny and Jamie make out with each other, witnessed by Scotty and Cooper, and are horrified when they realize what they are doing. The next day, a Slovak man drives them to Berlin. Scotty and Cooper learn that Mieke has left with a summer tour group, and will be reachable in Rome for only a short time. Jamie sells his Leica Camera for plane tickets to Rome to find Mieke.

In Rome, the group heads to Vatican City, where Mieke is touring before her summer at sea. Inside the Vatican, Scotty and Cooper search for Mieke and accidentally ring the bell of San Marco, which signals the Pope has died. Scotty appears on a balcony and spots Mieke in the cheering crowd below, who have mistaken him for the newly elected pope; all this happens while the current pope is watching live television. The Swiss guards realize what is going on and detain Scotty and Cooper for their actions. However, the Manchester United football hooligans from London suddenly appear at the Vatican and demand the guards release Scotty and Cooper. Scotty finally introduces himself to Mieke and confesses his love. Mieke is happy to see him, and they have sex in a confessional booth before she leaves on her trip. On the flight back to Ohio, Jenny and Cooper give into their urges and have sex in the plane's lavatory, while Jamie stays in Europe after being hired by Arthur Frommer.

Scotty moves to Oberlin College in the fall term to begin his pre-med studies. During his phone conversation with Cooper, who is dating Jenny, Cooper asks what Scotty's new roommate looks like. Mieke knocks on the door of his room, having been assigned to the same room because of another misunderstanding about her name. Scotty and Mieke embrace and get into bed together, with Cooper calling for Scott on the other end of a still-open cell phone call and the film's closing with the Absinthe Green Fairy wondering at his own lack of a sex life.

Cast

• Scott Mechlowicz as Scotty Thomas:
  A recent high school graduate who inadvertently makes the mistake of thinking his German pen pal Mieke to be a homosexual man, thanks to his limited fluency in speaking German. When he finds out that Mieke is in reality an attractive young woman, Scotty travels across Europe to Berlin to beg for her forgiveness. Mechlowicz described Scotty as a flawed but kindhearted man, who is "very lucky to have such a good group of friends to prop him back up".
• Jacob Pitts as Cooper Harris:
  Scotty's raunchy, libidinous best friend. Pitts described Cooper as a hypersexual man who is "driven by his own base impulses ... which gets everyone else into trouble."
• Michelle Trachtenberg as Jenny:
  Scotty and Cooper's friend and fraternal younger twin sister of Jamie. Trachtenberg described Jenny as both book savvy and a risk-taker. "She is more willing to take a chance or go on an adventure, whereas Jamie always has to be convinced", said Trachtenberg. As she was 18 years old at the time of the film's release, Trachtenberg was the only main actor in the cast who was an actual teenager, while the rest of the cast were in their 20s or older.
• Travis Wester as Jamie:
  Jenny's fraternal older twin brother. Wester described Jamie as a lifelong learner whose aspiration is "the accumulation and dissemination of knowledge".
• Jessica Boehrs as Mieke Schmidt:
  Scotty's German pen pal. Boehrs made her film debut with EuroTrip.

The cast also includes Vinnie Jones as Mad Maynard (leader of the Manchester United football hooligans), Lucy Lawless as Madame Vandersexxx (a sex-club dominatrix), Patrick Malahide as Arthur Frommer, Diedrich Bader as Mugger, Fred Armisen as Creepy Italian Guy, Kristin Kreuk as Fiona (Scotty's ex-girlfriend), Nial Iskhakov as Bert Thomas (Scotty's younger brother), Matt Damon as Donny (Fiona's new boyfriend), J. P. Manoux as Robot Man, Rade Šerbedžija as Tibor, Jana Pallaske as Anna the Camera Store girl, and Steve Hytner as the Absinthe Green Fairy. Jeffrey Tambor (uncredited) and Cathy Meils were cast as Mr. and Mrs. Thomas, respectively.

Production

Writers David Mandel, Alec Berg, and Jeff Schaffer were doing work as script doctors when in Mandel's words they concluded “Boy, comedy directors aren’t great, and it doesn’t seem to take a lot to be a comedy director. The bar is low — why not us?”. So they decided to write a screenplay reminiscent of the sex comedies they grew up watching, that could also be done in a small budget so they could also direct. Already with an idea of a trip to Europe after pitching this for an American Pie sequel, the trio wrote it while working on The Cat in the Hat, incorporating many stories from their friends in similar trips. The resulting spec script Ugly Americans got into a bidding war before Ivan Reitman and DreamWorks acquired it in June 2002, with a deal that allowed Mandel, Berg and Schaffer to direct and also that production had to start in the following year. The trio attempted to send the project to New Line Cinema once DreamWorks founder Steven Spielberg objected to a scene where Cooper mistook Anne Frank House for a brothel, given he is one of the museum's biggest donors, but the other studio also balked at the idea, so the scene was replaced in the Amsterdam sequence with one involving a dominatrix. The Directors Guild of America forbade the trio from sharing the credit. Schaffer earned the honor of receiving sole credit when a production assistant picked his name out of a hat.

Filming begun on February 2003. Aside from the nude beach in the German city of Rostock, all scenes were filmed in Prague, Czech Republic. The opening scenes set in Ohio were filmed at the International School of Prague. The scene where the main characters are boarding at the Paris railway station was filmed in Prague's main railway station (Praha hlavní nádraží). The scene inside Vatican City was actually filmed in National Museum in Prague. The scenes with a German lorry driver were taken at the then-unfinished D5 motorway near Plzeň. An air base in Milovice was used for Bratislava for its ravaged look, though once the crew returned to the location and found it clean, broken windows and graffiti had to added back. For the opening scene at the party, production had to look all over Prague for a house with a backyard, and Red Cups were brought from the United States. Arthur Frommer was initially approached to cameo as himself in the film; due to scheduling difficulties the role would ultimately be played by Patrick Malahide.