Directors: John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein Starring: Ed Helms, Christina Applegate, Leslie Mann, Chris Hemsworth Writers: John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein | 2/5 Vacation Hollywood is really pushing 1980’s nostalgia here recently. Just last week, we had Adam Sandler’s God awful Pixels, which banked off of retro video game love. Vacation aims for something else, retro movie love. Though it sounds more noble, it isn’t. Rather than taking the opportunity to build on the original National Lampoon film, screenwriters-turned-directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein have taken the easy route. In the same vein of last year’s Dumb & Dumber Too, Vacation circa-’15 takes just about every running gag from the 1983 original, updates it with smartphones, and regurgitates it back at our feet. The premise is mind-numbingly lazy: thirty years after Chevy took his family to Walley World, Rusty, all grown up and played by Ed Helms doing his same eager-to-please persona, decides a similar trip is just what the Griswold clan needs to pull them closer together. For anyone who has seen the original, we know that the healing will come, but only after two hours worth of deliriously unlikely, but effectively entertaining, hijinks. So we have Rusty, his long-suffering and bored wife Debbie (Christina Applegate, game as always), and his two sons, James (Styler Gisondo) and Kevin (Steele Stebbins). If you think it’s going to be different because there are two boys instead of a boy and girl, think again. Don’t let Rusty’s speech early on in the film sway you. |
I will admit that I laughed a pretty good bit during the film’s ninety-nine minute running time, but hardly any of them had the power to carry over into a second viewing. The scenes with Rusty’s sister Audrey (Leslie Mann) and her Republican husband Stone (Chris Hemsworth) are particularly hilarious, as is an early-in-the-film dinner scene with Keegan-Michael Key. They were only good, though, in an in-the-moment kind of way.
This is one of the many flaws that separates the new from the old. The original Vacation was about as silly as the new film, but many of its laughs resonated longer in the mind. It also helps that in 1983, we were hearing the jokes for the first time. There is absolutely no chance of the new film building the cult following the original has enjoyed. I will be surprised if anyone is talking about it in two months.