Vacation hits theaters on Wednesday, July 29th.
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We know what youre thinking that this sounds like a exhausted remake of the 1983 comedy gem National Lampoons Vacation and so does the writing-directing team behind the new movie, John Francis Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein. The one person who escapes the ghost of their spiritual predecessor is Applegate’s Deb, who gets a lot more to do than D’Angelo’s Ellen ever did.
When the now-grown Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms) announces his soft-hearted plan to force his family to bond by replicating his dad’s cross-country road trip to Walley World, his wife Debbie (Christina Applegate) warns that trying to re-experience a 30-year-old vacation will nearly certainly disappoint. This is a hard “R”-rated film and that rating is fully deserved”. Not really. It exists only to lead this unfortunate family from one mishap to the other, with no real resemblance of a true plot. This new “Vacation” sticks to the middle of the road instead. The installment needed healthy respect for the original creators and the fandom while also functioning as something that could stand alone. Judging from the laughter around me, this new movie should be popular. Yet with this franchise in particular, “if you talk to someone under 23, the likelihood is that they haven’t seen any of the Vacation movies”. The family’s mishaps in the original movie were frequently hilarious, thanks to the talents of Hughes and Ramis.
Alternately amusing, riotous, cringe-worthy and finally too stupid for its own good, “Vacation” arrives, and is stolen by a kid.
By the time Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo show up for their cameos, I was already disconnected from the film, but that scene was such a throwaway nothing that it left me bummed out as the film runs through a perfunctory final sequence or two.
Not much goes right for this group of Griswolds; they run afoul of a trucker, get taken advantage of by a stranger and have an, um, uncomfortable visit to the home of Rustys sister, Audrey (Leslie Mann) and her handsome, cattle-herding TV weatherman husband, Stone (Chris Hemsworth). They are a pod of poor bastards, beset on all sides and at all times by the black, tone deaf practical jokes of fate.
Rusty can’t wait. His wife, Debbie (Applegate), and sons, James (Skyler Gisondo) and Kevin (Steele Stebbins), would rather do anything else.
Like his father, Rusty has a sort of unflagging optimism that is a choice, not his natural state.
“Even more bored”, Goldstein says, giving direction after the take. This is the first time Daley and Goldstein have directed a feature, and two of their recent collaborations as screenwriters (“The Incredible Burt Wonderstone” and “Horrible Bosses 2“) were both abysmal.
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The stuff that comes out of the kid’s foul mouth isn’t safe for work or most shipyards. “And I watched them again just for fun”. “I sing too much on camera, but I think singing, especially when it’s inappropriate to sing, is one of the funniest things that there is and it fits”. Gisondo’s James lives for Jack Kerouac, poetry and dream journals but is also an endless target of emotional and physical bullying from his shorter sibling. I say bring it on. “You kind of get caught up in their relationship”. “In the ’80s, it was nearly like French New Wave comedy”. So it’s just not the low-hanging fruit joke. But all of them and none of them, in a weird way. It’s a chance for cinema’s Thor to let loose, and it pays off. The same can be said for Day, whose small part as a raft instructor having a bad day finds the Always Sunny actor delivering another frenzied, amusing performance.
