Vacation: An Entirely Unnecessary Retread That Constantly Contradicts Itself

Editor’s Notes: Vacation opens in wide release today, July 29th.

National Lampoon’s Vacation is indisputably brilliant. Just compare the film’s opening to its finale, and that’s apparent. We open with Chevy Chase as a straight-laced father of two at a car dealership, and end with Chevy Chase as the same man holding a fake gun to John Candy on various amusement park rides, all because of a seemingly innocent family road trip. Again, brilliant. Now, in 2015, writer/directors Jonathan M. Goldstein and John Francis Daley hope to follow up that brilliance by writing and directing something different, but still comparably rewarding. And, if the result is indeed a reward, it’s an insubstantial bronze trophy at best. Or maybe, just maybe, a 10 dollar cash prize to be spent on underwhelming ice cream.

This manipulation of nostalgia is completely callous, not to mention unneeded.

Vacation is essentially We’re the Millers, if it was a nostalgia-laden predecessor’s sequel, and written by someone who’d just seen 22 Jump Street for the twenty-second time and thought, “Woah, this is fate, I have to include some killer meta jokes in my script.” Here, we open on a goofy Ed Helms and his goofy Griswold family doing ludicrously absurd, often inappropriate things. Once the finale arrives, no aspect has changed. The road trip doesn’t evolve a thing, it’s just a recycled backdrop meant to allow four people who are already crazy to remain crazy. And maybe it’s just me, but crazy, at least Goldstein and Daley’s idea of it, gets pretty stale after a while. In comedy, crazy requires buildup, or at least a contrast, with two elements in a scene being different levels of sane. Both are things National Lampoon’s Vacation implemented with flying colors, and both are things Vacation sorely needs.

Ed Helms and others aren’t the root of the problem though, because even with all the script’s issues, the cast’s comedic timing finds a way to make a bit of it work.

But according to Vacation, we shouldn’t compare it to the original. Why? Because, very blatantly, they state that notion as a joke within the first ten minutes. Though a weak reason in and of itself, this would be acceptable if the other 90 minutes did their best to be independent. And do they? Judging by the repeated use of the song Holiday Road, a shoehorned Chevy Chase, and the cameo-like presence of a piece of machinery from the first film, no, they absolutely do not. Even in a scene featuring Charlie Day that’s successfully funny, as he’s crazier in it than the Griswolds themselves (momentarily placing the comedy on the right track), once Holiday Road’s familiar tune begins to fade in, the film instantly becomes concerned with resembling past glory. This manipulation of nostalgia is completely callous, not to mention unneeded.

Ed Helms and others aren’t the root of the problem though, because even with all the script’s issues, the cast’s comedic timing finds a way to make a bit of it work. And despite all I’ve said, there are still some laughs to be had. If they weren’t executed as well as they somehow are, they’d be footnotes in a review fueled by unbridled rage. But, as it stands now, they’re footnotes in a review only fueled by unevenly distributed disapproval. All in all, Vacation is an entirely unnecessary retread that constantly contradicts itself, disappoints on many fronts, and embarrasses the original film it simultaneously pushes away and pays homage to.

4.8 BAD

Vacation is an entirely unnecessary retread that constantly contradicts itself, disappoints on many fronts, and embarrasses the original film it simultaneously pushes away and pays homage to.