Vacation

The update/modern day reboot of the venerable Vacation film franchise is fairly middle of the road, and never quite works up to the level of absurd humor that the better entries of the earlier films (1983's original Vacation and 1989's Christmas Vacation) displayed in spades.  However, I must admit in honesty that there was one element in this film that truly made me laugh out loud, pretty much every time it showed up on the screen.  That one element is the car that the current Griswold clan uses to drive cross country to the infamous theme park, Wally World.

The car is a boxy monstrosity from Albania, and is an inspired bit of lunacy on the part of writers-directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein.  It's so convoluted and complex and makes so little sense, I often found myself laughing just looking at it.  The car's central feature is that it comes with a wide variety of buttons that seemingly either do nothing, or something completely nonsensical.  One button causes the driver's seat to swivel in a 360 degree motion for absolutely no reason, while another causes the rear bumper to fall off.  Even better, the buttons and how they are labeled are just as nonsensical as the features themselves.  The buttons are labeled with obscure pictures that couldn't possibly hint at what the button is supposed to do.  The labels include such random images as a top hat, a rabbit, a muffin, and even a swastika. ("I'm not touching that button", proclaims the Griswold patriarch, played by Ed Helms).  The car comes equipped with a GPS that screams at the driver in an angry Korean voice, and even includes cup holders...On the outside of the car.   It has two gas tanks, but seems to run out of gas on a regular basis, usually less than an hour after being on the road.

If everything else about Vacation had been as hilariously warped as the car the filmmakers have dreamed up, we'd probably be looking at the funniest comedy of the year so far.  Unfortunately, everything else about this update is so banal, it's almost not worth mentioning.  The film more or less follows the same template as the original 1983 movie, which featured Chevy Chase as the dad trying desperately to wring as much fun as he could out of a horrible family vacation where everything went wrong.  Just like before, the movie is made up entirely out of black out gags, or moments of black humor tied into odd encounters the family experiences on the road.  But whereas the original movie had such memorable moments as the dog that was tied to the bumper, or the ultimate fate of crabby old Aunt Edna, this movie comes up short in just about every way.  We get references to pedophile truck drivers, scuzzy motel rooms, drunken sorority houses, and suicidal river rafting guides.  But the movie never really goes the extra mile and tries to make these things actually funny.  It's like the filmmakers are checking off items on a list of things that could possibly be offensive but humorous, and forgot to add the second and most crucial part.

The main character in this film is Rusty Griswold, who was depicted as a teenager in the earlier movies (most notably by Anthony Michael Hall in the original), but is now an adult played by Ed Helms.  He's grown up to be a pilot for a cheap econo-airline and has a family of his own, which includes his supportive wife Debbie (Christina Applegate, likable, but underused here), sensitive teenage son James (Skyler Gisondo), and youngest son Kevin (Steele Stebbins), who seems to be a little psychopath in training, and likes to terrorize his older brother by smothering him with a plastic bag to see how long he can last until he passes out.  Rusty begins to notice that his family is bored and in a bit of a rut, so he springs the idea on them of a surprise trip to Wally World, the amusement park destination that the earlier Griswold clan trekked to in the first Vacation film.  They all pile into that hilarious car, and have a series of little adventures on the road.  These include a visit to a toxic raw sewage pond (which they mistake for a mineral hot spring), and a visit to Rusty's sister Audrey (Leslie Mann), who is now married to TV weatherman Stone Crandall (Chris Hemsworth), a rugged Texan with an exaggerated accent, and a large prosthetic in his shorts that is always sticking out through his boxers.

None of this is exactly bad necessarily, and while the movie can be gross, it never really offends.  It just never goes the extra mile to be truly funny.  We may smile from time to time, but outside of the gags involving the car, I never actually laughed.  In fact, there are some moments where the filmmakers actually seem to be pulling back from offending anybody.  When Rusty's family visits his sister Audrey, they make a point to mention that her husband is a far right-leaning Republican, and that his values clash with the rest of the family.  Yet, when they arrive at Audrey's home, this is never really brought up, nor are political views even hinted at or joked about.  I understand that the directors are obviously trying not to offend a certain portion of their audience, but at the same time, it feels like a set up without a punchline.  None of the individual adventures the family experiences on the road are all that memorable, and while some moments may elicit a mild chuckle, most of the jokes fall flat.

But at least the actors seem to be trying their best with the material they've been given.  That's more than can be said of Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo, who make an extended cameo as their characters from the earlier movies.  Rusty's family pays them a visit at one point, and we learn that Clark and Ellen Griswold have retired and now run an unsuccessful bed and breakfast.  This leads to a lot of painful scenes of Chase bungling around in an awkward and slow manner, as he fumbles about in a sad attempt to recapture the kind of physical humor that made him a star back in his Saturday Night Live days.  It's like watching somebody well past their prime being forced against his will to perform, and he looks uncomfortable doing it.  It's supposed to get laughs, but we really just end up being depressed.  D'Angelo, meanwhile, is given so little to do in her scenes that she may as well have not shown up at all.  Fortunately, this only goes on for about five minutes, though it feels a lot longer when you're watching Chase's personal humiliation, and the filmmakers expect you to laugh.

Vacation is horribly uneven, and often not that funny, but I will admit to laughing out loud a few times, mostly at the Griswold car.  It's a stroke of comedic gold in an otherwise fairly drab film.  Considering how many comedies I've sat through this year that have had no laughs at all, this at least puts it in the mid-range.  You may have the odd laugh, but you likely won't remember anything about the film a month from now.

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