College Road Trip is not the usual high-school abattoir that the title suggests. Quite the opposite. It’s a squeaky-clean Disney fable about the failure of a local police chief, Martin Lawrence, to let go of his grown-up daughter. Melanie (Raven- Symoné) is the chubby and bubbly apple of his eye. She wants to go to a university at least 700 miles away. He wants to stuff her back in the video machine and permanently rewind the tape to when she was 6. Instead he high-jacks Melanie’s road trip to a college interview far far away by deciding to drive her there.

This is an elemental father-and-daughter bitch complete with blubbery mum, crackpot junior son and pet piglet. There isn’t an ounce of real life between here and Somers Town. The glory is Donny Osmond, who delivers an exquisite turn as a fellow control freak in spooky tune with a daughter who could carve brass bed-knobs with her voice alone.

U, 83 minutes

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