Adele Lim’s comedy Joy Ride is an easy film to categorise – there are a few ribald features released in Hollywood ever year – but pigeon-holing it risks ignoring what makes this particular holiday-gone-wrong adventure so effective. True creative achievement comes not from following a formula successfully, but from finding new ways to reshape it.

In the case of Joy Ride, which is written by television writers Cherry Chevapravatdumrong (Family Guy) and Teresa Hsiao (co-creator of Nora from Queens), the successful pitch has been placed at the intersection of empowered women and Chinese culture. It is an angle American-dominated film culture has not really seen before. Its success comes from a willingness to be bold in its character behaviours, and to match the gross-out and shock value extremes of male iterations of the genre. Do not think of it as a female Hangover; think of it as The Hangover will characters you actually like.

Audrey Sullivan (Ashley Park) is a Chinese-born adoptee working for a prestigious Seattle law firm. Tasked with travelling to Beijing to supervise a key business agreement, Audrey takes her lifelong artist friend Lolo (Sherry Cola) along for the ride. Audrey invites her eccentric K-pop-obsessed cousin Deadeye (Sabrina Wu), and once in China they unite with college friend turned Chinese soap opera star Kat (Stephanie Hsu). Shenanigans ensue, as they always do, leading to a disastrous cross-country road trip to find Audrey’s birth mother.

First and foremost this is a hugely effective gross-out comedy, with its mind firmly in the gutter and a willingness to really push the envelope in terms of getting away with things. More than that, however, is a strong sense of agency given to the characters. They drive their own missteps and calamities. They have active sex lives that are not subjects of shame or moral judgement. Critically, this works in opposition to popular depictions of Asian women’s sexuality.

Joy Ride is a film about identity and ethnicity. While a rapid-fire string of gags and comedy bits cover the surface, there is genuine insight and emotion underneath. The film depicts contemporary China in what feels like a knowing and informed manner, without any of the bland stereotyping that dominates Hollywood depictions of the subject. The narrative actually manages to surprise more than once.

Strong performances across the board ensure that the characters live up to the film’s potential. Ashley Park gives a strong performance in the lead role, and benefits from her own string of humorous mishaps – something often denied the protagonist in this kind of movie. Support for her character is distinctive and well-balanced, whether it is Sherry Cola’s sex-positive artist friend Lolo or Stephanie Hsu’s pent-up Kat. Sabrina Wu is particularly effective as the strange and eccentric Deadeye.

This is a great surprise: staging an effective sex comedy is one thing, but developing such a rich, thoughtful dramatic undercurrent is another. This is next-level commercial cinema. It is not just really funny. It also has something of worth to actually say.