Admittedly, I was suspicious of Joy Ride. The past few years have seen more and more Asian American films in typical Hollywood genres such as rom-coms, superhero blockbusters, and slow-burn dramas. Many have been excellent, some not so much, but in several of them I’ve noticed a recurring theme: a protagonist’s overidealized return to Asia. Joy Ride, a new film about an Asian American adoptee and her friends going to China, seemed primed to replay the trope.

But as I wheezed with shock and laughter 20 minutes into the film, I understood that it was doing something different. I felt this even more when Audrey (played by Ashley Park) lands in China, and exclaims that everyone looks like her. This feeling of empowerment from being in a place where you’re not, upon first glance, as conspicuous a minority is a fairly typical observation in movies about diaspora homecomings. But before Audrey can get too excited, her best friend and travel companion, Lolo (Sherry Cola), points out that the airport has people from Taiwan and mainland China, as well as K-pop stars who are so glamorous, they bypass customs—and they’re all legibly different. Audrey might be tempted to see these Asian faces as interchangeable so that she can feel like she belongs; Lolo implies that’s a fantasy, not reality.

This is also a message to the audience: Joy Ride is interested in acknowledging—and then unraveling—what I’m calling the motherland trope. I’ve particularly noticed it in films of the past several years, where an Asian American character travels to Asia, though it can exist across cultures. Maybe the protagonist is flying to Singapore to meet their wealthy boyfriend’s family à la Crazy Rich Asians (a film that Joy Ride’s director and co-writer, Adele Lim, also co-wrote). Perhaps they’re on a fantastical superhero mission, as in Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Or maybe they’re busking in the streets of South Korea and falling in love with a local manic pixie dream girl, as in the quieter indie film Fiction and Other Realities. Whatever the reason, the characters use a trip to Asia to understand themselves. At times, the motherland trope can be an effective structure to hold the emotional transformation of its main character. But at its worst, it turns Asian countries into a setting for Asian American protagonists to address their problems of alienation or loneliness back in the U.S.—but fails to see these countries as places with their own complexity or diversity. It can start to feel like these characters are Eat Pray Love–ing among people they claim as their own.

Take a keystone of the motherland trope: the homecoming montage. In Crazy Rich Asians, the lead couple, Nick and Rachel, touch down in Singapore and are swept off to a night market, where friendly neighborhood aunties and uncles smile at them while deftly preparing delicious satays and laksa. In Shang-Chi, the Asian American protagonists play out a thematically identical sequence in Macau, speeding through the neon-lit city, gawking at dancers and vendors in the street. Both films end with the second-generation Americans experiencing profound growth: Rachel gains self-confidence (as well as a husband), and Shang-Chi becomes a literal super hero.

Upon first glance, Joy Ride might not look like it’s swerving from these broad-strokes plotlines. The story follows Audrey, a Chinese adoptee to a white family, who goes to China with Lolo and “Deadeye,” her friend’s cousin. Initially, she’s there for a business deal, but thanks to Lolo’s goading and a few comical circumstances, she ends up using the trip to find her birth mother. Joy Ride eventually serves us a tongue-in-cheek version of the familiar montage where Audrey seems to accept her quest: The gang rides on the back of a truck with locals before Audrey spins around, Sound of Music–style, in front of a mountain vista, declaring “I love China!” The sequence culminates in a raucous party at Lolo’s grandmother’s home, where the extended Chinese family welcome the friends with open arms.

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However, Joy Ride leans into its over-the-top sensibility and delivers these idealized sequences with a wink and a nudge. The viewer isn’t meant to understand the “I heart China” montage as a simplistic form of character development. Instead, it’s part of the film’s larger setup, nudging audiences toward a gut punch. First, Audrey’s blissful embrace of her personal journey is played comedically, as a reflection of her naivete. Then, when she’s finally on the brink of meeting her birth mother, she isn’t granted a sweeping realization of self-fulfillment. Instead, she’s given surprising news about her heritage that changes the very premise of her search for an identity. Audrey doesn’t return to the U.S. with a convenient epiphany, but with more complications than she left with.

That sense of complex unfinished business is visible in other films with similar arcs that resist idealizing a homeland. Lulu Wang’s The Farewell follows this narrative, as do smaller-scale films from European Asian filmmakers, such as Davy Chou’s electric Return to Seoul and Hong Khaou’s Monsoon. The main difference between these films and their flimsier counterparts is their ability to use a homecoming as a plot device but pointedly stop short of suggesting that it will solve all of the character’s problems. In The Farewell, the story’s focus is less on what the protagonist’s return to China can offer her, and more on her navigation of grief across borders. In Return to Seoul, an adoptee’s trips to South Korea are used to take an uncompromising look at her ambivalence and recklessness. Monsoon connects its main character’s longing for home with his homoerotic longing. All of these films refuse to indulge in wish fulfillment.

Joy Ride is no different, and brings a subtle wisdom to an otherwise bawdy comedy. Audrey’s core need is for belonging and acceptance. Instead of having her find it abroad, the film directs her to look to her friends who stood up for her on the playground or buoyed her through college. The idea of a pilgrimage leading you right back to the loved ones who have been there all along is also a common plotline in a girl’s- or guy’s-trip narrative. But given Joy Ride’s cultural context, it acts as a clever undoing of the motherland trope. Audrey’s friends are her redemption because they’re part of the same complicated diaspora and know what it’s like to struggle to belong in specific ways. Lolo’s sex-positive artwork is unwelcome in the restaurant that her immigrant parents run; another friend, Kat, is desperately playacting celibacy to her highly religious Chinese fiancé despite her raunchy college past. These women ultimately needn’t look for some kind of mythic belonging—they already belong to one another. By having its characters reach that realization, Joy Ride relinquishes the motherland of an obligation to solve everything, and underlines the transformative power of the relationships that we call home instead.