National Lampoon’s vacation films with Chevy Chase and its various sequels are normally fun to watch, the Christmas one I seem to find watching every year so I thought why not give the reboot a go
The reboot stars Ed Helms (who I love in TV’s The Office) as Rusty one of the Griswald children from the Chevy Chase films and Anchorman’s Christina Applegate as his wife Debbie, so if I’m honest I had high hopes for this one for being laugh out load funny
Sadly it’s not! There does seem to be a good film in it but it seems to want to be as crude and offensive as it can be with jokes ranging from a trucker being accused of being a rapist and an extremely awkward seen where Rusty tries to be his wing man for his son chatting up a girl that comes across as grooming which I found to not be funny at all
The film starts well enough, we see Rusty in his job as a domestic airline pilot which he loves and how he looks after fellow airplane pilot who had been deemed to old for the job, his awkwardness around people which he ends up groping in a scene involving turbulence, we see how he doesn’t stand up for himself when he is pushed out the way by cocky mainstream pilot Ron (office space) Livingston and then when he gets home, we see him put up with his friends at dinner who laugh at his vacation ideas whilst they head off around the world
Rusty sees Debbie is down when hears them talking and decides instead of taking the family to the same cabin they go to every year to recreate the holiday he did with his parents to visit Walley World in a hope of bringing the family together
Being last minute, he can only hire a foreign people car carrier with a remote with lots of instructions but not being English they do not know what for, and this is cause of many jokes throughout the film, revolving driver seat and racist GPS to name but 2
Along the journey Debbie faces up to fact she is getting older after visiting her old frat house and challenged to a drinking game, a hot springs that turns out to be raw sewage, we meet Rusty’s sister Audrey played by Leslie Mann and her husband Thor himself Chris Hemsworth in scenes where we meet a cannibal cow amongst others, a raft trip with a suicidal guide and various overnight hotel stays from hell
The film however comes alive in the final third when Rusty considers himself a complete failure having lost all their belongings and having pressed the cake button on car remote blown it up taking the family (via Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus as a trucker) to his Mum and Dad in order to arrange flights back home, Clark and Ellen (the original Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo)
Clark gets Debbie to face the truth about their marriage and loans Rusty the original film’s station wagon in order for them to complete their trip to Walley World
The film has promise and is certainly not awful thanks to an endearing performance by Helms but you can’t help but think if they had gone for a PG13 rather than R rating this could have been a considerably better film as when it is at its best is the moments when the Griswalds deal with day to day life and strength of their marriage, the oldest son upon meeting a girl coming out of his shell and facing up to his foul mouthed younger brother and even the final scene where Rusty faces the cocky pilot again and the family get to together to defeat him are much better moments than the shock tactics of other jokes
The film starts with a big speech about how it is neither a reboot or sequel and will stand on its own but I for one am not so sure and not sure it will spawn various sequels like the original did!
Have you seen Vacation? What did you think, am I getting old, did you find the jokes not crude at all? Why not let us know
Vacation
Rated 15
Running time 99 minutes
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