Review of Vacation (2015) by Chevy C — 23 Aug 2015

Vacation Review.

Vacation, the latest in the long running National Lampoon Vacation series starring Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo. The film's have become American classics, with the most popular one, Christmas Vacation, becoming a holiday classic to watch during Christmas time. The films all center around the Griswold family as they go on a road trip together by car and hilarious hi-jinks ensue. 2015 showcased the return of the Vacation movies with the appropriately titled "Vacation", without the National Lampoon tag in it. One would have expected this to be somewhat similar and just as funny as its predecessors. Keyword being "expected", as the movie couldn't have been farther from being as fun, memorable or even as hilarious as the original films. In fact, this movie is actually so far off from being a descent comedy, that it makes The Master of Disguise look like something Charlie Chaplin would have made.

The movie is NOT about Clark Griswold, but rather his son Rusty, played by Ed Helms, who's family, or rather his ungrateful wife Debbie, played by Christina Applegate, is tired of the same mundane vacation they always go for every year and wants to go to Paris because her neighbors went to Paris and so now she wants to go as well. Rusty feels bad about how boring he believes his wife and children feel so he decides to follow the plot of the original movie that this movie happily and pathetically steals from and makes a joke about it thinking it's being clever, which is to take the family on a road trip to Wally World, the amusement park from original. Predictably, things go wrong as both Rusty, his wife, and they're two godawful children James and Kevin, have to endure several hi-jinks that include swimming in a spring full of shit, running over a cow and getting its blood and entrails all over, calling Daryl Dixon from The Walking Dead a pedophile rapist, riding a raft with a suicidal tour guide played by Charlie Day, and other dumb jokes that the writers think is funny. That's the entire movie in a nutshell, and the hilarity comes in short supply, and I mean shorter than the water shortage in Puerto Rico.

Now one of the things that really is absent in this movie is the essence of family that was perfectly present in the original movies. No mater how bad things get for the Griswold clan, they always stick together and love one another regardless, and ultimately overcome their struggles as a family. This movie has none of the heart or love that the original movies had. Rusty himself is a nice enough character who only wants to spend quality time with his wife and children, but both his wife and children are ridiculously unlikable that you just want them to disappear completely. These kids are some of the worst fucking children I've ever seen on film. James himself is a pathetic little shit who, of course, is portrayed to be extremely delicate and weak, making you wanna slap some dignity into him. Then there's Kevin, and I'm just gonna say it, I hate this fucking brat. He's a vulgar, abusive little bastard who has no respect and barely has any character aside from picking on his older brother for reasons that the movie is too lazy to come up with. Debbie herself isn't too unlikable, but she comes off as the old mother who used to be a party animal that grew up and thinks she's still got it. Gee, haven't seen that before.

There's other characters in the movie that really do nothing, but to add more unfunny jokes with nothing clever about them nor anything that hasn't been done in the film already. Speaking of which, the humor in this movie is next to nonexistent. Aside from one funny gag involving 4 rangers from 4 different states aiming guns at one another, the movie has NONE of the clever humor hate the original films had. This movie uses what I assume is a checklist of jokes that were funny in movies like Bridesmaids, Van Wilder, The Hangover and A Million Ways to Die in the Old West and incorporated them into this movie hoping its intended demographic of underaged 12 year olds with no sense of good quality will find funny. The worst part is that many of the jokes are as predictable as the plot for the movie, and a lot of them are used as excuses for punchlines to well built scenes that could have been fun or memorable, like when Debbie gets made fun of for being old by Elizabeth Gillies from Victorious. The joke should be that because she's old, she can't pull off the challenges that she agrees to do, but ends up making it out and winning; instead, she gets so drunk that she can't do jack shit and keeps puking over and over, because whoever wrote this thinks this is funny.

Overall, Vacation is not just a bad comedy, it's a bad example of trying to use nostalgia to win over fans of the original into seeing a movie that has absolutely nothing to do with the original aside from a few characters and homages that the movie does little to nothing with. Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo are in the movie for only 8 minutes respectively, the rest of the characters as previously mentioned are just used to add more terrible jokes into a surprisingly long movie, there's a dumb running gag with a trucker played by Norman Reedus who keeps chasing after them, somehow knowing where they're going to be even before they appear into the scene, a stupid love interest for the older brother, and virtually nothing new to offer. Just to showcase the true desperation that these people had for laughs, these people reuse one of the most popular jokes from the original movie, the scene where the family is asleep and Clark is driving while a woman on a Ferrari is driving next to him making flirtatious faces at him, and he gets so distracted that he nearly gets hit by a truck. These lazy bastards are actually so desperate for jokes, so desperate to get a laugh out of the viewers, that they directly STEAL A JOKE FROM FAMILY GUY WHERE THEY PARODY THIS EXACT SCENE BUT THE TRUCK HIS THE FERRARI KILLING THE WOMAN IN THE PROCESS! HOLY SHIT, HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? Bottom line, Vacation has its moments, but it fails in almost every direction possible to be even considered a descent comedy.

Overall Rating: 2 out of 10!