So, let's just remind everyone what I've been saying all summer long about half the movies that have come out... lazy filmmaking exists. It's running rampant through our theaters. It's either speeding through plot so quickly that character development goes unnoticed... or it's a sequel/prequel/reboot/spinoff that's essentially a shittier carbon copy of the original material that we once love that has been so bastardized and beaten down by it's following films we don't recognize it anymore. This accurately sums up Vacation. It's that exact type of sequel/reboot/spinoff that cares so little about the source material that it winds up copying it but in a much lazier way. It's not a good movie. By any means. And I would never recommend it to anyone with an IQ higher than that of a third grader. But, I will say that the laughs (and they are few and far between) actually did hit pretty hard. Unfortunately, there was a total of three of them... in the entire film.
I have been an Ed Helms guy since his days on The Daily Show. He was the big toothed, innocent, loveable idiot who moved from that show to the most perfect role for himself as Andy Bernard in The Office. There are some great Andy moments and before the show decided to screw up his arc, him and Erin's back and forth was almost as good as Jim and Pam. But, then the show ended. And Ed Helms is left to do one singular character for the rest of his life. He's Andy Bernard in Cedar Rapids. He's Andy Bernard in The Hangover movies. And he's a retarded, socially inept Andy Bernard in Vacation. By now, it isn't funny. But it's all he has. And, obviously in The Office he was able to make it work. But, by now, it's a dead character. And it certainly isn't reminiscent of ANY Rusty Griswold from ANY of the previous movies. Rusty was never going to grow up to be a simpleton who is as vanilla as the ice cream he's probably lactose-intolerant of.
Here's the rub: Rusty is a socially awkward man-nerd who doesn't understand social cues and has a very strange relationship with his family-- they don't respect him. He decides to re-create his childhood trip to Wally World and drive across the country to visit there one more time. Along the way, they piss off a trucker (unfunny). Their car explodes (2.5/10 on the funny scale). They return to Rusty's wife's old sorority and she drinks a lot and vomits a lot (unfunny). They visit Audrey and her hulk of a husband (played by Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth) on her farm and Rusty accidentally plows through a cow on an ATV (the entire scene is unfunny), they visit a hot springs that is actually a bubbling vat of human shit (very unfunny), they visit the four corners monument and are interrupted by a ton of people having sex and get interrogated by four different cops from the four different states (kinda funny), they go white water rafting in the grand canyon (very funny), and they arrive at Wally World where something not nearly as clever as Chevy Chase holding a BB gun on John Candy happens. Along the way Rusty, who is a man, has to learn to be a man. His wife is the only character that actually looks like she knows what she's doing. The kids have occasional funny insults flung at one another, but it's a one-note joke that never really pays off at all.
Bottom line, there are three big laughs in the movie. Are they worth going to the theater to watch? Absolutely not. They're hardly good enough to watch on youtube six months from now. John Hughes and Harold Ramis knew exactly what they were doing when they first created Vacation. They knew how to establish a funny family, while allowing for hijinks to ensue on a road trip that were actually relevant, clever, and creative. Now, in favor of creativity, we are given bodily fluids and kids that swear like adults, and a man child who is aloof to anything resembling common sense. It's some of the laziest filmmaking I've seen this summer (don't worry, it's not even close to as bad as Pixels was, Dear Lord!). And if it wasn't for some of the better cameos in the film, the entire movie would've been a waste. It's still mostly a waste, but some of it is salvaged. You know, like when you throw out pants you hate in the trash and some greasy hobo comes by and takes them and they actually kinda look good on him-- Vacation is like that.
C-
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