Review of Vacation (2015) by Mike F — 14 Jan 2016

Though I had mixed feelings about many of the original entries into the original National Lampoon's Vacation series (1983 - 1997), the big-name cast of Vacation highlighted a potentially fun experience.

National Lampoon's Vacation (1983) is an iconic film for many reasons. It was innovative at the time of its release for introducing the traditional crude elements of National Lampoon's brand of comedy into the family film genre. Since this has already been established by the first film and then worn off by the weak nature of the sequels, with the exception of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989) which was decent. And since remakes rarely ever work, a remake/reboot of the series hardly seems necessary or all that time appropriate.

Vacation ends up borrowing the exact same formula as National Lampoon's Vacation but substitutes its jokes for a more contemporary style of humour. This means that viewers familiar with the original film will know where the story is going to go and what the themes will be, so it's a matter of if the jokes will work. Unfortunately, the crude nature of Vacation is hardly clever this time around but feels rather familiar and repetitive without actually being funny. There is no clever originality or wit in the gags, they simply attempt to go over the top with potty humour which wears thin very fast and then just repeatedly hits viewers over the head with it before beating them to the ground and kicking them like a dead dog. Vacation is merciless in delivering its humour because two writers and two directors thought it would be funny without stopping to consider what constitutes a joke in the first place. This leaves viewers with a dreary plot so thin that it leaves the story to end in the most pathetic way.

National Lampoon's Vacation was able to keep over-the-top gags coming from the most unexpected places which kept the film full of surprises, but Vacation proves directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley desperately attempting to go over the top with every single joke that comes along. Attempting to cram an abundance of potty humour into 99 minutes, Vacation sets its tone immediately and then goes in circles instead of being unpredictable and clever. In actual fact, it is just very mean-spirited. Perhaps the finest example of this flaw is how poor Rusty Griswald's "climactic" freakout is. Vacation depicts the modern day family system where swearing is considered far more appropriate at younger ages and everybody has their heads buried into social media. The swearing in the film seems to believe it is edgy, but is simply pathetic in its repetition and tiresome extremely fast. The moment in National Lampoon's Vacation where Clarke Griswald snaps and Chevy Chase goes on a profanity-infested rant is the funniest in the film. By the point that Ed Helms does the same thing in Vacation, there has already been so much swearing occurring that the audience is numb to any swear word by this point, meaning that the funniest scene in the original film is not even remotely humourous in this remake-sequel. Vacation fails to evoke any nostalgia to its superior predecessors unless Lindsey Buckingham's "Holiday Road" is playing, and it is too painfully unfunny to stand as a strong film of its own right.

Even though Vacation is packed with a cast of notorious actors with roles varying from main characters to brief cameos, there is very rarely any valid use of them. And yet the fact that they give such brief appearances mean that they aren't given enough time for their characters to end up being repetitive and therefore making themselves much funnier than the main cast.

The return of Chevy Chase to his role of Clark Griswald is a welcome supporting spot. There is little distinctive about him that can be surmised by his brief period of time on screen, but considering how much Vacation wallows in comparison to the day that he headlined the series and he also made a recent comeback on the TV series Community, it is great to see him again. He makes a friendly presence and offers a couple of laughs with his witty line delivery even though he capitalizes more on a stereotype of incontinence this time around. Chevy Chase is one of the few bright spots in Vacation.

Chris Hemsworth is also a likable addition to the cast. Despite his condemnation to making a lot of unexplainable faucet jokes, the Hollywood star delivers an effective send-up of his hunk image by exploiting his muscles for all their value, particularly in one scene where he stands in plain sight of the camera for an extended period of time with his abs tense and his penis supposedly in state of semi-erectness.

Charlie Day's brief burst of over the top energy is a delight in such a dreary and repetitive film, even if the material he works with is as awkward as everybody else's. Leslie Mann is also always a likable presence, and Michael Pena's brief and random moment is a brief rush of humour in a film that really needs it.

When referring to the main cast, there is little to boast about.

Ed Helms is a funny man as he has proven on the cinematic screen with the Hangover trilogy (2009-2013) and on television with The Office (2005-2013). But in Vacation, his neurotic well-intentioned nature is abused by the script and directors more than the other characters in the films. Going in circles without being funny in the first place, Ed Helms is stuck with material so below him that it is really a struggle to watch him fail to cross his natural charm with slight undertones of Chevy Chase. The moment where Ed Helms finally snaps and cracks it at his family with tension and anger is lifeless and pathetic, recalling a better time when Chevy Chase delivered his own monologue with insane hilarity and even the episode of The Office where Andrew "Andy" Bernard unleashes his anger in the workplace and punches a hole in the wall. This scene is the most pathetic moment in the film simply because it reminds viewers of material and performances which were far better and the true lack of necessity to bring back a dead franchise. Ed Helms serves to be no benefit to Vacation, suggesting that he lacks the strength to carry a film on his own.

Christina Applegate offers no fun either. Arguably her greatest film appearance is as Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) where her strength as a comic actress came from her fiery passion and sass. In the case of Vacation, she plays a dull and unfunny mother archetype where she is offered no chance to use her strengths. She is so incredibly generic and doesn't even have the kind-hearted nature that Beverly D'Angelo offered in National Lampoon's Vacation which means she just fades into the background. As a result she is less pretentious and annoying than much of the major cast, but she is also less memorable as a result.

Steele Stebbins clearly has a fun time swearing but he seems to be alone in the experience, and Skyler Gisondo is a cringe-worthy and repetitive whiner who is easy to despise.

So Vacation has some enjoyable cameos, but the thin story is packed with repetitive crude gags which never land an original hit or offer the cast anything to work with, effectively making this remake-sequel a pathetic excuse to bring back a franchise killed by Vegas Vacation (1997).