Vacation Review

7 out of 10

Cast:

Ed Helms as Rusty Griswold

Christina Applegate as Debbie Griswold

Skyler Gisondo as James Griswold

Steele Stebbins as Kevin Griswold

Chris Hemsworth as Stone Crandall

Leslie Mann as Audrey Crandall

Chevy Chase as Clark Griswold

Beverly D’Angelo as Ellen Griswold

Charlie Day as Chad

Catherine Missal as Adena

Ron Livingston as Ethan

Norman Reedus as Trucker

Kegan-Michael Key as Jack Peterson

Regina Hall as Nancy Peterson

Emyri Crutchfield as Sheila Peterson

Alkoya Brunson as Gary Peterson

Nick Kroll as Colorado Cop

Tim Heidecker as Utah Cop

Kaitlin Olson as Arizona Cop

Michael Peña as New Mexico Cop

Hannah Davis as Ferrari Girl

David Clennon as Harry Co-Pilot

Colin Hanks as Jake

Kirstin Ford as Mom on Plane

Ethan Maher as Boy on Plane 

Directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein

Story:

Thirty years after taking a road trip to Walley World with his family, Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms) decides that taking his own family on a similar trip will help them bond and get along better. Wouldn’t you know it? Everything that can go wrong, does.

Analysis:

I loved the original National Lampoon’s Vacation and its later sequel Christmas Vacation. I consider them true benchmarks of ‘80s comedy, so one can only imagine that I’d go into this sequel–because it is a sequel–with some trepidation. Surprisingly, the writers of Horrible Bosses (including a former “Freak and/or Geek”) do a good job updating the premise and getting laughs with a new family that’s just as dysfunctional.

Not that it’s the hardest premise to screw up, because almost everyone has been on a family vacation gone wrong as displayed in the montage of awkward family vacation photos that opens the movie. We’re then introduced to Ed Helms’ Rusty Griswold as he’s piloting a plane that runs into problems. Back home, his two sons are always fighting as the younger one, Kevin (Steele Stebbins), is constantly bullying his older brother James (Skyler Gisondo), a sensitive lad who is into music and poetry. As we soon learn, Rusty is a chip off the old block as everything gets screwed up from his only choice in travel vans–something called a Tartan Prancer–to some of the decisions made along the way.

One of the reasons the movie works at all is that Ed Helms is as genuinely genial as he is awkward, and teaming him with the out-of-his league Christina Applegate (who continues her hilarious 2nd act) adds an inherent humor to their pairing similar to Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo in the original movies. Helms doesn’t play it quite so dumb as Chase did in his day but still manages to be just as likable.

Possibly one the most surprising turns is Chris Hemsworth going way out of his comfort zone to play Audrey’s wealthy conservative Texan husband. Most of the scenes with him, Helms, Applegate and Leslie Mann (as the grown-up Audrey) are played out to the biggest laughs because Hemsworth seems game to take the caricature as far as he can.

There are moments where Daley and Goldstein go for the more obvious humor like Applegate’s return to her state college sorority where she was known as “Debbie Do Anything,” which basically amounts to a lot of projectile vomiting. The ongoing joke about the car and all the odd buttons also is taken beyond the point where it continues to be funny, but for the most part, the jokes never slow down.

Vacation’s biggest hurdle is finding its own identity separate from the original movie. By the fourth or fifth time they play Lindsey Buckingham’s “Holiday Road” (and various derivations), it’s a bit much and you wonder whether this movie has any chance at standing on its own. By the time Rusty’s family stops by his parents’ place–and yes, Chev and Bev are reprising their roles–the movie starts losing steam and their arrival at Walley World just doesn’t stand up to the rest of the movie.

There’s also that age-old issue of some of the funniest bits having already being revealed in various commercials and trailers, which is a bigger problem than when funny jokes from the trailer aren’t anywhere in the movie. Fortunately there’s other stuff to enjoy, like a short sequence involving Charlie Day as a white water raft guide who makes deliberately bad jokes before taking them on a perilous ride on the river, to an ingeniously clever gag based on the Four Points landmark where four states connect.

There’s also a nice ongoing storyline involving James meeting a pretty girl along their route and how that helps resolve the friction with his younger brother, which successfully shows that the filmmakers understand why the original movie, written by John Hughes and directed by Harold Ramis, worked so well, and that makes up for some of the more mindless moments.

The Bottom Line:

While far from perfect and often going for the lowest brow laughs, Vacation offers enough genuinely funny and even a few touching moments to show the filmmakers know how to capture the spirit of the original movies without rehashing the same jokes.