Vacation (2015) Review!!

Synopsis – Rusty Griswold takes his own family on a road trip to “Walley World” in order to spice things up with his wife and reconnect with his sons.

My Take – After Mad Max: Fury Road looks we have another 30 year old franchise making a comeback in the form of a sequel/ reboot to National Lampoon‘s Vacation franchise. I am a big fan of the original Vacation (yet gracefully ignored the three sequels) and 80’s comedy in general. There was something fresh and unique about those comedies and how “raunchy” they were for the time. And I happen to think we saw some of the most brilliant comedians during that decade and whether you all agree or not, Chevy Chase was part of that. He had an indelible comedic timing and his doofus, klutzy & lovable Clark Griswold was a legend. So I was cautiously optimistic about a reboot of this franchise. The concept made sense and the cast sounded good for a new generation & being a fan of the situational comedic timing of Ed Helms, I walked into this movie expecting just that. Nowadays comedies go straight for the ridiculous toilet humor and they drive it down your throat – body functions, sex jokes, nudity, drugs and complete stupidity. Technically this film has a lot of that. It is raunchy (though I’ve seen worse in the last few years) and a lot of the gags seem really stupid but when you look closely you’ll see that I think the film makers were actually trying to capture the essence of the National Lampoon films and I think they almost pulled it off. I saw so much of the original ideas and gags in this film, but that may also be its biggest problem as they feel a little stale now. No, the movie is not bad! Depending on what kind of audience you belong to! If you enjoyed the Hangover movie trilogy and the two Horrible Bosses film, then you will probably hoot at the jokes here. Well, I kinda fall into that crowd. Hence, I have to give them kudos because I don’t think this film was a cash grab, I really think they wanted to pay homage to the original series, reboot it for a new generation and make something memorable. (In my opinion) The film strikes a great balance between honoring its iconic origins and paving its own holiday road. The movie makes use of a few sight gags and incidents from the 1980s classic, but puts its own spin on them. The adult Rusty is every bit as earnest and bumbling as his dad, but Helms makes the character his own.

As in the first film, the script makes good use of the comic potential inherent in a cross-country car trip, but doesn’t repeat any scenarios from the earlier movies. Despite the distractingly inappropriate amount of foul language coming from the family’s youngest member, the humor, as raunchy and crude as it is, works well. While the first film’s humor was often more subtle in nature, the jokes in this one are often laugh-out-loud funny. The story follows the all grown up only son of Clark (Chevy Chase) and Ellen Griswold (Beverly D’Angelo) – Russell ‘Rusty’ Griswold (Ed Helms), who is a pilot now for a small budget airline. Like his parents in the earlier films, he’s married, has two kids and lives in Chicago. His wife, Debbie (Christina Applegate), is loyal and supportive, but longs for a little more spontaneity and variety in the marriage. They have two kids, boys named James (Skyler Gisondo) and Kevin (Steele Stebbins). James is an awkward, nerdy teenager and his foul-mouthed kid brother teases him mercilessly for it. Maybe a cross-country road trip is just what this family needs to come closer together. After all, as the movie poster asks: What could go wrong? Rusty decides to drive his family all the way from Chicago to Walley World in California, recreating his family’s similar (but infamous) childhood trip, hopefully with better results. Rusty starts by renting a “Prancer”, a car that’s even more interesting than the “Family Truckster” in the original film. It has two gas tanks, along with a plug which doesn’t look like it would fit any outlet in the known universe. This boxy blue bastardized Toyota Previa has a key fob and control panel with a bewildering number and assortment of buttons and a GPS that too easily gets stuck harshly giving directions in Korean. But taking this “Honda of Albania” out on America’s highways is only the beginning of this Griswold adventure. Their ill-advised road trip involves being followed by an ominous-looking truck, being directed to a “hot spring” that really isn’t, losing personal possessions, plus father and son having a sex talk that’s more conjecture than fact. Stops on the trip include a very revealing visit to Debbie’s old college, a river rafting trip with a highly unstable guide (Charlie Day), a visit with Rusty’s grown sister, Audrey (Leslie Mann), and her hunky local TV weather man husband (Chris Hemsworth) as well as stopping at a bed-and-breakfast owned by a couple who will be very familiar to fans of the earlier films. In between moments of mild humor and hit-or-miss gags, what’s on screen is hell funny! Murphy’s Law governs everything that Griswolds set out to achieve. Nevertheless, each of these encounters is hopelessly hilarious, although you’d hate to find yourself in similar circumstances. Like his impractical father Clark, Rusty wants to do more than just motor across America. He wants his family to experience the scenic beauties along the way. They stop at a crowded, Hot Springs National Park, and an unsavory yokel suggests they take advantage of a less traveled road to a private hot springs. Little do our gullible heroes know this local is setting them up for mischief. Moreover, the gorgeous looking hot springs that the Griswolds splash into turns out to be a raw sewage pit. A Grand Canyon water-rafting guide (Charlie Day) gets a phone call from his fiancee who decides to dump him. After the Griswolds set out on the river, their suicidal guide alters course for rougher waters that terminate in a waterfall. At another juncture in their journey, Rusty lets Debbie visit her Memphis, Tennessee, college girl house where he discovers she slept with 30 or more guys before they got married.

Sure, at time the film is both infantile and scatological, but the fearless cast maintains straight faces throughout the hokum no matter how grotesque things get. All too often in lesser comedies, the cast behaves as if they are in on the jokes. Admirably, neither Ed Helms nor Christine Applegate lets on that either know how hopelessly nonsensical their exploits are. Applegate smears feces onto her face and remarks how abominable it smells until she realizes her folly. Furthermore, our heroes cruise for miles without realizing that pranksters have defaced one side of their Prancer with a humongous phallic symbol. When Rusty and Debbie realize that they have a pornographic image on their car, they spit on their hands and struggle futilely to remove it with vigorous scrubbing motions, groaning emphatically with their exertions. Clearly, freshman directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein have designed their updated adaptation at an audiences that love to laugh out loud and keep on laughing out loud at blatantly vulgar antics that leave little to the imagination. Sure, I can see why some people (especially the younger generation) would not like this at all because it does have the same vibe of the original film and in fact has some gags that you simply wouldn’t get without seeing the original. And times the film does feel a little dry and messy. As in such, (in my opinion) it needed a lot of editing and a lot of experience from someone to fine tune this into what it should have been. Among the performances, without any doubt its Ed Helms & Christina Applegate who soar & rise to their center stage as funny people in comparison to their overshadowed parts in The Hangover & Anchorman series. Chris Hemsworth also proves he’s apt at comedy as Audrey’s overbearing husband. Leslie Mann as always is likable. Charlie Day is hilarious. Norman Reedus is good in a cameo. Chevy Chase & Beverly D’Angelo are alright in their limited screen time. On the whole, ‘Vacation‘ may not be the best comedy film out there, yet delivers on its promise of providing a Laughton & a homage to the original. Give the movie a chance. You can enjoy this thing provided you go into it with the lowest of expectations. In a summer featuring dismal failures like Fantastic Four and Pixels there’s no real justifiable reason why Vacation is being rated so low. It’s funny and it really does get the series back on course.