Warner Bros. Pictures
It’s been eighteen years since the Griswold family took their last vacation (to Las Vegas) and now son Rusty (Ed Helms) is all grown up with a family of his own. Rusty is a pilot of a domestic economy airline, so the most exotic vacation he gets to take his family on is to the same rustic cabin they’ve been going to every year. Sensing it’s time to shake things up, Rusty decides the family should re-live his greatest vacation of all time, when his family hit the road to Walley World more than 30 years ago.
The chore is getting his own family excited for the trip. Wife Debbie (Christina Applegate) would prefer to go to Paris, and the boys, James (Skyler Gisondo) and Kevin (Steele Stebbins), could not care less, and really don’t want to spend days trapped in the same car together. They have issues. But Rusty rents a “luxurious” Tartan Prancer, and the Griswolds hit the road once again in the hopes of making it to Walley World.
Warner Bros. Pictures
Along the way, Rusty thinks it would be a treat to show the boys where Debbie went to college (it is but not in the way he expected), a scene that really gives Applegate a moment to shine, then detour to a famous hot spring, and an overnight stop at sister Audrey’s (Leslie Mann) home, where her overly flirty and overtly exhibistionistic husband is a little to friendly with Debbie. And, after an unfortunate moment with Kevin and the car’s standard CB radio, the family is also being chased across the country by a possibly homicidal trucker (a major surprise cameo had our screening audience gasp the actor’s TV character’s name when he finally showed his face). James also keeps awkwardly bumping into a teenage girl along the way who seems to be plucking his heartstrings just as he plucks (rather well) the strings of his guitar.
It’s been many years since I’ve seen the original Vacation, and what I remember most from it was that it was a very dark comedy, almost uncomfortably unpleasant, sometimes mean-spirited, but still managed to make all of that extremely funny. The new Vacation is less dark, focusing instead on more outrageous sight gags, sexual innuendo and potty humor (literally in the case of the scene at the hot springs). The darkest the film gets is in a scene that apes the famous original where Chevy Chase is flirting with Christie Brinkley as they drive down the highway. The flirting with Rusty and a similar blonde does not end as well (if you’ve seen the ads for the movie, you know what happens, and I really questioned the humor in it).
But, outside of that one moment, I enjoyed the film. I didn’t laugh as hard as I have this summer at either Spy or Trainwreck, but I did laugh more than I expected to. A lot of critics are just panning the film for the sake of panning a “remake” of a classic comedy but the film, while sharing some elements of the original, is more of a sequel since this is adult Rusty and both Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo also make appearances as Clark and Ellen. We’re just catching up with the Griswolds now.
While Ed Helms plays the befuddled Rusty very well, the movie really has three stand-out performances: Applegate is just wonderful as Debbie, playing the mom role to perfection but also getting to cut lose at her old sorority house in a scene that generates one of the biggest laughs of the movie. Gisondo is also quite good as the geeky, gawky James, continually bullied by his little brother, and put in very awkward situations with his dad. He really was perfection, and he should have a long career ahead of him (and the 19-year-old has already been acting for 12 years!). The Tartan Prancer is also a character unto itself, with a panel and key fob full of mysterious buttons, like a muffin, that have no rhyme or reason to what the function is. A majority of the film’s funniest bits involve the car.
Special mention also goes to Charlie Day as a white water tour guide about to take the Griswolds rafting when he gets some soul-shattering news, but goes about with his job anyway. A scene of slo-mo panic set to Harry Nilsson’s “Without You” is amazing, and one of my favorite scenes in the movie.
Many people may be ready to write off Vacation as just another example of how Hollywood has run out of original ideas, but I think the average movie-goer will find the movie to be quite funny. (And, yes, the original film’s theme “Holiday Road” plays many times throughout the movie. Maybe a little too much.)
Vacation has a running time of 1 hour 39 minutes and is rated R for crude and sexual content and language throughout, and brief graphic nudity.
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