EuroTrip

EuroTrip
Directed by	Jeff Schaffer
Written by	Alec Berg David Mandel Jeff Schaffer
Produced by	Alec Berg Daniel Goldberg David Mandel Jackie Marcus Joe Medjuck
Starring	Scott Mechlowicz Jacob Pitts Michelle Trachtenberg Travis Wester Jessica Böhrs Lucy Lawless
Distributed by	DreamWorks
Release dates	February 20, 2004
Running time	90 min.
Language	English
Budget	~ US$25,000,000

EuroTrip is a 2004 American comedy film produced by the same people as Road Trip and Old School. It tells a story of an American high-school graduate and his friends traveling around Europe.

Plot

Hudson, Ohio

EuroTrip begins with the main character Scott being dumped by his girlfriend Fiona (Kristin Kreuk) at his high school graduation in his home state of Ohio. When he comes back home, he e-mails the happenings to his German pen-pal Mieke (which he mistakenly pronounces as "Mike"). Scott's friend, Cooper says that "Mike" is a sexual predator who will ask to come to America to have sex with him, after Scott admits that the pen-pal is so close to him and "he" (Mike) knows of Scott's inner secrets. That night, at a party, Scott finds out that Fiona cheated on him with another guy, Donny (Matt Damon), whose band is playing at the party. Scott finds out when Donny's band sings the song "Scotty Doesn't Know", portraying him as the main character. When he arrives home, he receives an e-mail reply from "Mike", who says "he" is sorry for what all that has happened to Scott, and wants to arrange a meeting inorder to make him feel better. Drunk and angry, he tells Mieke that "he" is a sick perverted freak, resonating on Cooper's earlier comment and then blocks off the address. The next day, Scott notices his brother, Bert, reading his emails. Irritatedly, he tries to send off Bert, but instead finds him in amusement. Scott asks the reason, for which Bert replies that Scott's "got this cute German chick" in his mailbox. Scott is confused. Bert takes German language classes in school and the same language is used in communication between Scott and Mieke. Bert says that "Mieke" in German is not "Mike" as Scott considers it, but actually a name similar to "Michelle" in the English Language. Scott notices the seriousness of the situation and tries to get in touch with Mieke again, only to find out that she too blocked him off. He then realizes the only way is to confront her face-to-face. For that, he needs to travel to Germany. He tells his plans to Cooper, who still thinks Scott is confused about "Mike", but then Scott explains the situation, after which they plan to travel to Germany together. Thus, the "EuroTrip" begins when Scotty and his friend Cooper set off to Mieke's town of Berlin, Germany to win back Mieke's heart.

London, England

Unable to afford a passenger ticket, Scott and Cooper receive a discounted rate by travelling as couriers to London, England which appears to be no problem as Cooper insists that Europe is "the size of the Eastwood Mall" and hopes to have "crazy European sex" after explaining that the United States was founded by prudish Europeans who didn't like the steamy European sex, and that he intends to return to the land of his "perverted forefathers" to claim his "birthright."

In London, the two of them go to a pub since there is no drinking age in England (this is incorrect however, the UK has a drinking age of 18). But the pub they stumble into is a private pub for the members of the Manchester United football team fan club, so they do not receive a warm welcome from the fans, who are hooligans. The two teens say that they are a Manchester United fan club from Ohio, and after making up their own version of the football team's anthem (based on Sheena Easton's Morning Train), the group welcomes them and they have a wild night of drinking. The next day, Scott and Cooper wake up on a double-decker bus, finding out that the fan club is going to Paris for a Manchester United game.

Paris, France

After driving through France on the wrong side of the road with football hooligans yelling "Get out the way you're on the wrong side" and other similar comments and all other motorists having to swerve out the way. Scotty and Cooper meet up with their friends in Paris, twins Jenny and Jamie. While waiting in line for the Louvre, Scotty gets into a robot dance showdown with a mime street performer (Robot Man) and wins by kicking the mime in the groin to which he groans, "error error....error." The four of them go to a restaurant and Jenny and Jamie decide that they will also go to Berlin with Scott and Cooper to find Mieke. They also agree on visiting other parts of Europe, since this will be the last summer the four of them will spend together before going off to different colleges. Later, the gang arrives at a Paris railway station, where Jenny meets an enchanting European man, but has to leave to catch their train.

Crans Sur Mer, France

After a long train trip — during which Jamie is groped and fondled by an Italian man (Fred Armisen) — they end up at a quaint (and fictional) French town, Crans Sur Mer, where they visit a nude beach. To their dismay, it is full of naked men, also looking for nude girls, who are at another nude beach. After Jenny meets up with them and takes off her cover-up shirt to tan in her bikini and Jamie makes a big scene of covering her up, they are chased down the beach by naked men desperate to see a nude girl.

Amsterdam, Netherlands

A much-needed stop along the way in Amsterdam, Netherlands leads to Cooper going to "Club Vandersexxx" (which is, unbeknownst to him, an especially brutal BDSM club), where he is seduced and later tortured by Mrs. Vandersexxx (played by Lucy Lawless), mostly due to his inability to pronounce the safe-word (FLÜGGĂЭNK∂€ČHIŒβØL∫ÊN). Scotty and Jenny go to a café and eat hash brownies that are drugged and proceed to "freak out". However, they learn much to their embarrassment that the brownies were not hash brownies and that the café was just an ordinary Dutch bakery. While Jamie is at a camera store seeking to have his prized Leica M7 camera cleaned, shop keeper Anna (Jana Pallaske) takes him to the alley behind the store to engage in oral sex. Unfortunately, Jamie, who is in charge of all of the money and passports, is robbed of everything by a mugger (Diedrich Bader).

Bratislava, Slovakia

With no choice but to hitchhike to Berlin, they manage to get a lorry driver to pull over. Unfortunately, he does not speak English and Scotty must use what little German he knows to communicate with him. He misunderstands the burly driver and believes they are indeed going to Berlin based on the fact he said it numerous times - though he was actually trying to explain he was going "nowhere near Berlin" as he is wanted for stabbing a woman and sexually assaulting a horse there. Consequently they end up in Bratislava, Slovakia where they are horrified by the desolation of Eastern Europe.

They talk to a Slovak man (Rade Šerbedžija) and discover that there is no train network. It is also revealed the Slovaks are only just now receiving American TV shows from the 1980s, as evidenced by the Slovakian saying "Miami Wise number one new show" and "Stop. Hammer time!" They only have US$1.83 but due to the (exaggerated) exchange rate, they get the executive suite at a lavish Slovak hotel. They arrive at a nightclub that is apparently owned by the man Jenny met at the railway station in Paris. She discovers that he is married and bisexual. In a fit of depression, Jenny downs half a bottle of absinthe — becoming so intoxicated that she makes out with Jamie, her brother. The next morning, the same Slovak man (Rade Šerbedžija) drives them to Berlin.

Berlin, Germany

After reaching Berlin, they find out that Mieke has gone on a boat tour for the summer and will only be reachable in Rome for a short time. In order to afford flight tickets, Jamie sells his precious Leica camera to earn enough money to travel to Rome.

Rome, Italy

In Rome, the four go to Vatican City, since Mieke will be there before she leaves. They get in because Jenny says that they are a private tour group, that Cooper is mentally retarded and that Jamie, who has memorized a tour guide book of Europe, is their guide. After Cooper manages to ring the bell of Saint Marco and lighting up white smoke in Vatican City, which makes everyone think Scotty has been elected as the new pope, Scott finds Mieke and jumps down a banister to meet up with her. Although the Swiss Vatican guards realized what was going on and attempted to stop them and severely punish them for their actions, the football hooligans from earlier in the film return (because of their hatred toward Italians, although the Swiss Guard are actually Swiss and use German as their official language) and thwart their attempts. Soon after, Scotty introduces himself to Mieke and they spend time having sex in a confessional before Mieke boards her boat. A man whom Jamie took on a tour of the Vatican turns out to be Arthur Frommer (played by Patrick Malahide), author of the guidebook Jamie has memorized and he hires Jamie to tour every museum and cathedral in Europe. It is here where the adventure ends and the group splits up to head back home. On the flight home, Cooper and Jenny have sex in one of the aircraft's toilets after both complaining about not getting any crazy European sex.

Oberlin College, Ohio

At the end of the film, Scott moves to Oberlin College, and is talking on his phone to Cooper, who is also at college. Mieke surprises him when she says that she is his roommate, due to another misunderstanding about her name. The film ends with Scott dropping his phone, Cooper still on the line, and of Scott and Mieke them kissing. Cooper's voice is in the background, since he is still on the line on Scott's phone, and he hears the two of them kissing, but thinks that Scott's roommate is a guy (since Scott didn't tell Cooper on the phone that Mieke is his roommate) and that Scott is kissing a boy.

Cast

Main Characters

• Scott Mechlowicz – Scott (Scotty) Thomas
• Jacob Pitts – Cooper Harris
• Michelle Trachtenberg – Jenny
• Travis Wester – Jamie
• Jessica Boehrs – Mieke

Ohio

• Kristin Kreuk – Fiona
• Nial Iskhakov – Bert Thomas (Scott's brother)
• Matt Damon – Donny
• Jeffrey Tambor – Scott's father

London

• Vinnie Jones – Mad Maynard (Hooligans' leader)

Paris

• J.P. Manoux – Robot Man
• Patrick Rapold – Christoph
• Fred Armisen – Creepy Italian Guy on Train

Amsterdam

• Lucy Lawless – Madame Vandersexxx
• Go Go Dyei Jen-Michel – Rasta Waiter
• Jana Pallaske – Anna the Camera Store Girl
• Diedrich Bader – Mugger
• Joanna Lumley – Hostel Clerk

Bratislava

• Dominic Raacke – Trucker
• Steve Hytner – Green Fairy
• Rade Šerbedžija – Tibor

Berlin

• Walter Sittler – Mieke's father
• Adam Dotlacil – Heinrich

Vatican City

• Predrag Bjelac – Italian man
• Joel Kirby – Swiss Guard
• Patrick Malahide – Arthur Frommer
• Jack Marston – Pope John Paul II
• Mindy Sterling – Woman in confessional
• Petr Jákl (actor) – Gunter

Theme song

"Scotty Doesn't Know" is a song that was written exclusively for the movie. It is performed by the band Lustra, but in the movie, the lead singer was portrayed by Matt Damon, whose character has surreptitiously stolen a girl from "Scotty," hence the title and subject matter.

The song contains numerous lewd references to how Scotty's girlfriend Fiona (played by Kristin Kreuk) has been cheating on him with Damon's character for an extended period of time. In the movie, the song becomes something of a popular phenomenon: a week or so later in Bratislava, the song has been remixed and is playing in a popular nightclub. By the end of the movie, it has become so widespread and (presumably) popular that Scotty's best friend Cooper is able to use it as his cell phone ringtone. The song is noted by several characters in the film (including members of Scotty's own family and even Scotty himself) for having a "catchy tune".

Soundtrack

• 1. Scotty Doesn't Know - Lustra
• 2. My Generation - Chapeaumelon
• 3. Wild One - Wakefield
• 4. 99 Red Balloons - Goldfinger
• 5. In The City - The Jam
• 6. Shooting Stars - Cauterize
• 7. Nonchalant - Chapeaumelon
• 8. Scotty Doesn't Know (Euro Version) - MC Jeffsky
• 9. Make My Dreams Come True - Apollo 440
• 10. Du - David Hasselhoff
• 11. Les Promesses - Autour De Lucie
• 12. I Love Marijuana - Linval Thompson
• 13. Turn It Up - Ugly Duckling
• 14. Get Loose - The Salads
• "England 5 - Germany 1" , a song by the seminal English Oi! band The Business plays on the hooligan bus trip to Paris. This song does not appear on the soundtrack.

Trivia

• Matt Damon actually shaved his head during filming of the movie.

• When they are boarding the train station in Paris, the scene was actually filmed in Prague's main railway station (Hlavni Nadrazi).

• The two large, leather-clad men at the Vandersexxx club are named Hans and Gruber. Hans Gruber is the main villain in Die Hard.

• The "safe word" that Cooper attempts to say is "FLŰGGÅƏNK∂€ČHIŒβØL∫ÊN," a completely made up word that contains characters from many European languages, as well as other special symbols
  • Letter Ű (U with Double acute accent is used primarily in Hungarian.
  • "Flug" means "Flight" in German
  • Å is used in many Scandinavian languages and represents the "aw" sound. To many people it is most familiar as the "Ångström sign".
  • "gå" is "to go" in Swedish, Norwegian and other Scandinavian languages.
  • Ə (schwa) is not a letter of any European language and mostly known as a phonetical sign.
  • ∂ is a mathematical sign of partial derivative
  • € is a Euro currency symbol.
  • Č is used in East European languages and represents sound [tʃ] (ch)
  • Œ was used in medieval and early modern Latin, and in modern French, and also the vowel sound it represents.
  • β (Beta) is Greek letter representing sound "v".
  • Ø is used in Scandinavic (Danish, Faroese and Norwegian) alphabets and sounds as better known German, Swedish and Islandic "Ö"
  • ∫ is a mathematical integral sign
  • Ê is used in French, Portuguese, and Welsh language as a variant of letter “e”.
  • BOLSEN, BÖLSEN or BØLSEN looks like a Germanic (German, Danish, etc.) surname, "sen" is a typical suffix of Danish names literally meaning "son".

• Even though the group states "And we can go to Denmark - Yeah I love Denmark", it is the only one of the countries suggested at the dinner table they do not visit.

• In the German version of the movie, the scene where Scotty and Cooper visit Mieke's father in Berlin, Mieke's younger brother, Heinrich, gives himself a Hitler-like moustache and marches in the background while giving the Nazi salute was removed.

• Scott refers inaccurately to England as an island. England is one of three constituent countries to make up the island of Britain.

Errors

• Cooper and Scott appear to fly from the USA to the UK on a Lufthansa airplane. This is wrong as Lufthansa does not have any such service.

• When Cooper and Scott are leaving for Europe, the plane that is shown taking off has three engines and, in the scene that follows immediately afterward, we see a two-engine plane.

• In the opening credits the Republic of Ireland is shown covered by the Union Jack, as if it is a part of the United Kingdom. This is wrong as it is an independent state.

• In the scene where Scotty reads e-mail of Mieke about her arrival to USA, the German word "zusammen" is misspelled as "zussamen" both in e-mail and the dictionary he looks up. It is also listed as a verb meaning "to come together for a meeting" when the actual word just means "together."

• The Feisty Goat pub Scotty and Cooper visit is misspelled as 'The Fiesty Goat.'

• When the group is outside the Vatican City, right after Jenny tells the Swiss guard that Cooper is mentally retarded, Cooper is seen biting off the upper cup part of his ice cream cone. When they walk inside the Vatican the guard tells Cooper to have a special day and it can be clearly seen that his ice cream cone is whole again.

• After Mieke and Scotty have sex in the confessional, they are shown coming out kissing. While kissing you will notice that Meike's dress is unzipped in the back. When it goes to a close-up of Scotty and then shows Meike leaving, her dress is zipped up.

• When Scotty and Cooper get to London, Scotty says that England has no drinking age. This is not true, as you must be 18 to purchase alcohol in Great Britain.

• When Fiona is dancing next to Matt Damon's character on the stage she can be seen whipping her jacket around her head. When the shot changes to the side she is wearing it again. When it changes back to the front view the jacket has disappeared.

• During the encounter between Scotty and The German Trucker, The German trucker says "Nie wieder Berlin!", in the film this is translated as "Nowhere near Berlin!", in actuality this would translate as "Never again Berlin!"

• Bratislava was actually shot in Czech Republic. It is located between Germany and (real) Slovakia. Most of actors who appear there are Czech. There are even few references in "Special thanks" about CR.

• There is a railroad in Bratislava.

• US$1.83 is about 40 SKK. It is barely enough to pay entry to Club. So the thing about "Exchange rate" is clear nonsense.

External links

• Official website
• EuroTrip at IMDb
• EuroTrip at Rotten Tomatoes
• EuroTrip at Box Office Mojo