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As funny as the first, and more satisfying in some ways.

Sundance Film Festival, Premieres (IFC Films)

Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Rosie Fellner, Claire Keelan, Marta Barrio, Timothy Leach, Ronni Ancona, Rebecca Johnson

Michael Winterbottom

PARK CITY Early on in Michael Winterbottom's follow-up to 2010's The Trip, a skeptical Steve Coogan frets to frenemy Rob Brydon about the prospect of taking a second vacation together, again to gather material for food-travel stories the latter intends to write; sequels are generally ill-advised, he contends. When Brydon cites the second chapter of the Corleone saga, Coogan swats it down as the aberration people always cite in sequels' defense. "It just feels odd to do something for the second time," he squirms.

Well, The Trip to Italy is the Godfather 2 of road movies in which brilliant British comedians take the piss out of each other while eating exquisite food. As funny as the first go-round, more beautiful to look at, and better conceived, it should mark a high point in the prolific director's box office career, with the obvious exception of his Angelina Jolie starrer A Mighty Heart.

This is less a sequel, really, than the third in a trilogy: Winterbottom first observed the chemistry between the two actors in 2005's Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, where the behind-the-scenes component of his meta-film, in which they snipe at each other and argue over their relative importance to the production, was by itself plenty of reason to see it.

This time out, the men (playing themselves, with fictional details added where needed) have been commissioned to review a half-dozen Italian restaurants ranging all the way from the top of the boot, in the vicinity of Cinque Terre, to Sicily at the bottom. Coogan assumes that Sicily was thrown in just to give Brydon an excuse to do Godfather-inspired Al Pacino impressions (a callback to Shandy), but that's just the tip of the cinephilic iceberg: Throughout the film, the men and their occasional companions obsess over talk of movies that were filmed at whatever famous spot they happen to be. Rossellini's Journey to Italy, Bogie in Beat the Devil, Godard stripping Bardot down in Contempt, and of course La Dolce Vita and Roman Holiday -- all are springboards for riffs on movies and, more importantly, for impersonations of their stars.

Coogan and Brydon can't help themselves, loudly arguing about the best way to imitate De Niro (the trick is speaking through your nose) or Brando (stuff bread in your cheeks). If you'd saved all your life to see Italy and were treating yourself at one of the esteemed restaurants seen here, you might be furious at being seated next to such a voluble party. Quiet diners' loss is our gain, though: One long riff on Christopher Nolan's Batman films, which begins (of course) with Michael Caine and ends in an imagined on-set confrontation between an assistant director and Tom Hardy (the AD is timidly trying to get the muzzled Bane to enunciate more clearly), is side-splitting.

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The Trip to Italy Sundance Film Still - H 2014