Three decades later, Vacation is a pale, paunchy reboot of the original, with a surplus of coarse, in-your-face comedy papering over a lack of true wit.
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The doomed-family-trip theme could be a gold mine of humor.
Ed Helms knows he’s entered sacred comedy ground by taking over as patriarch of the Griswold family in the new Vacation, but it helped that his predecessor was there to figuratively hand off the keys. Helms gives Rusty more layers than you’d expect and he’s the emotional center of the film. “Chevy is one handful of actors and comedians who are the reason that I do what I do and he’s very literally a hero of mine”, the actor said. How had he even managed to get up and dress himself in the mornings?!
The Griswold family is back and packing their bags for a trip to…you guessed it!
Then there are times when the filmmakers take a good idea and ruin it. When the family stops at Debbie’s college alma mater in Memphis, we learn she had the nickname “Debbie Do Anything”.
Now let’s talk about the new age Griswold kids.
Teenage son James (Skyler Gisondo) takes after his dad’s sweet nature, which does nothing to help the bullying from his younger brother Kevin (Steele Stebbins), a mini psychopath with a serious potty mouth. “There’s very little narrative character development, and the characters have virtually no consequences for their actions throughout the whole movie, which is part of the delight of that movie, but I think that’s a hard sell in 2015”. “Jesus!” before the family even managed to hit the road, and I’m no prude! But what makes Rusty complex and hopefully more amusing is that he also is repressed and in denial about a few things. “She moved on and became a great mother and a great wife but she just misses having spice and fun”. But one things for sure, Debbie is no Kelly, as in Bundy. It was clearly Audrey and Stone’s child, but there was no mention of the baby, pictures of the baby, any indication that there was a baby in that house, in any previous scenes with the family. “As far as I’m concerned Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo are comedy royalty, and it’s a privilege to exist not only in the same universe that they brought to life as the Griswolds, but to actually be in this movie with them”. They haven’t lost their touch and it’s nice to see them back as the senior Griswolds.
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The screenwriters get some decent mileage out of a couple of original elements, including the comically absurd Albanian-made vehicle used to make the trip, a wry cameo by The Walking Dead’s Norman Reedus as a creepy trucker with a teddy bear stuck to the front of his big rig, and a suicidal Grand Canyon river guide named Chad (Charlie Day). This edition of Vacation won’t be going down without a huge swing into the realm of gross. The lights went down, the New Line Cinema logo played and the opening credits started.
