Over
thirty years after National Lampoon's Vacation would become a
hit film, enough to spawn three sequels, one which has become a
holiday staple for some families with
Christmas Vacation, we finally get another sequel. Yes,
a sequel, not a remake, even though, for all intents and purposes, it
is that too.
Although the original couple, Clark and Ellen Griswold, do make an
appearance, Vacation in 2015 concentrates on their 40s-ish
son, Rusty (Helms, Stretch), who is
now also a husband and father of two. Like his dad, Rusty is a
bit klutzy and more than a little daft, even if he has earnest
intentions for keeping his family entertained and loved. Though
flawed, it's hard not to root for a guy who, above all else, wants to
experience the joy of singing along to Seal's "Kiss from a Rose" with
his family accompanying him in the vocals.
From here, Vacation follows the formula of the first film,
often making reference to it, while also venturing out into different
situations that the original Griswolds could have also gone on if we
had more clips of their road adventures along the way. 2015's
Vacation ups the lewd and crude factor of the 1983 release
significantly, and engages a bit too often into mean-spirited gags
that will make one feel uneasy more than laugh, including no less than
a half-dozen references to pedophilia, a couple of rape jokes, the
aforementioned suicide, a few attempted suffocations, grotesque
cannibalism, and a family dip into a creek filled with raw sewage.
Underneath the modernization of the ick factor for an audience that
has become accustomed to gross and tasteless humor, the basic formula
is the same: father subjects his family to activities with escalating
embarrassment, mother tries to be a good sport but defers to him,
siblings spat with each other throughout.
Speaking of siblings, Rusty's own sibling from the earlier
Vacation films, Audrey (Mann, The
Other Woman), also makes an appearance, now a wife and mother
as well. She doesn't get many jokes to deliver, as wives take a
back seat in these films, while her husband Stone, played by
scene-stealing Chris Hemsworth (Avengers:
Age of Ultron), pushes the Griswolds with lots of politics
and sex and other things one shouldn't really discuss with new
company. Hemsworth and Mann are such good at playing for comedy
that it makes one wish we followed the vacation of Audrey instead of
Rusty, though that might require tampering with the tried-and-true
formula in ways that would upset series purists.
The casting isn't bad, with Helms and Applegate (The
Book of Life) a likeable main couple, even if they've already
been beaten to the punch a bit with the similarly premised
We're the Millers, which had
also been a bit funnier. Vacation is directed an
written by the team of John Francis Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein (Cloudy
with a Chance of Meatballs 2,
Horrible Bosses), who do an efficient job at sticking to the
tone and overall structure of the original series, but they also feel
confined to it, which makes some of the humor feel overly familiar and
occasionally forced, especially when it tries to deliver raunchier
laughs.
As the film enters it's climax and ending, Vacation runs out
of ideas, especially in its way that Clark and Ellen Griswold feel
inexplicably thrown in through happenstance. Chase (Hot
Tub Time Machine 2) has long since ceased being very funny,
and poor Beverly D'Angelo (Playing It
Cool) is given nothing at all to do in her scenes except
merely to exist. Lots of other recognizable character actors
make cameo appearances here, including Charlie Day (Horrible
Bosses 2), Ron Livingston (Parkland),
and Michael Pena (Ant-Man), plus
some other surprises I won't spoil, though they're all as hit and miss
as the rest.
It makes little sense to nitpick much about the plot (or relative lack
thereof) of a Vacation flick, as, at its core, this is a
series built on trying to amuse us in the audience through the plight
of a calamitous couple who suffer a series of embarrassments that will
greatly rival our own, all the while allowing for a modicum of empathy
because we've likely suffered through our own skirts with family
disasters in our time, especially when going on trips outside of our
comfort zone. All we care about is whether we find the film
amusing, especially in how often it will deliver on its promise of big
laughs.
My experience is that the film hits its stride during a handful of
scenes (Hemsworth is amusing, as is an incident at the Four Corners
Monument where Rusty and Debbie attempt to have sex in four states at
once), while the rest is largely not funny, especially when we can see
the machinations of the formula set-ups for so-called hilarity to
come. As with most absurd comedies, your mileage will vary,
though I feel the film is much like the Tartan Prancer that's at the
heart of the trip: full of needless components and a few undesirable
surprises, and persistently runs out of gas almost as soon as it feels
like it's about to really get going again.
Qwipster's rating
