We’re long past the point of debating whether a movie is a remake, reboot, or re-imagining. (The time-looping recent “Terminator Genisys” seemed to be all three, and I’m still scratching my head over it.) So the 1983 “Vacation” (directed by Harold Ramis) was the first in a series of ’80s hits written by John Hughes, and it came with the National Lampoon imprimatur — a certain nasty, satisfying revenge against the square parents of the baby boom. Two sequels, also starring Chevy Chase, progressively got softer and more PG-13; and no one today was clamoring for a re-whatever.
But this is Hollywood; everybody loves Ed Helms (now playing grown Griswold son Rusty, a discount airline pilot); and road-trip movies are easy to write and cheap to film. Questioning his paternal fitness, “Russ” simply packs the wife (a game Christina Applegate) and two quarrelsome sons into a rental car — more on that below — and heads from Chicago to L.A., where he has a longstanding grudge with a certain theme park called Walley World.
What happens en route doesn’t really matter: It’s the same haphazard collection of dumb family-embarrassment gags you could find in any comedy without the “Vacation” moniker. Helms communicates more decency and frustration than the role requires; he never exudes the contempt that Chase — who appears with Beverly D’Angelo in the inevitable late cameo — made his stock in trade. (Having ignored Chase’s recent return to TV, I never thought I’d miss his lazy condescension; now seeing him again, I don’t. Turns out that his one core joke, 40 years back, was how stupid old people were. It hasn’t aged well, and neither has he.)
The film has one standout gag, set in the Four Corners region, building and building to heights of inanity — but it really has nothing to do with the Griswolds. (“Vacation” is written and directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, of the “Horrible Bosses” franchise.)
Other than that, little here merits a further “Vacation” spin-off but for the rental car, an Albanian-made Tartan Prancer. It’s a blue minivan with two gas tanks, four side mirrors facing in both directions — “for safety,” Rusty reasons — and a baffling array of buttons on the dashboard and key fob. Each indecipherable glyph — muffin, swastika, duck, scissors, etc. — causes Rusty (and this viewer) the kind of incomprehension and terror presented by iPhone emoji.
Never mind that Rusty is a jet pilot, this movie persists in making him yet another Dumb Old Dad.
“Vacation”
Rating: R, for crude and sexual content and language throughout, and brief graphic nudity
Showing: Alderwood Mall, Cinebarre Mountlake Terrace, Galaxy Monroe, Marysville, Stanwood Cinemas, Pacific Place, Sundance Cinemas Seattle, Thornton Place Stadium, Cascade Mall
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