The Vacation franchise now stars Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms) as he takes his own family on his childhood trip to Walley World. The original, National Lampoon’s Vacation is still one of those great stand out comedies that we find ourselves watching every couple of years. This new vacation takes components of the original franchise, but fails to find its own signature. What we get in this film is a balls out Vacation film that is more of a parody on what came before it over anything else.
The plot is straight forward as all road trip films are: Rusty decides to change up the rut his family is in by taking up a road trip just like his father Clark did to Walley World. Along the way they meet quirky characters and give nods to the original as you can see here in this red band trailer.
The character development is almost abysmal and when the script calls for the characters to change it feels forced. Ed Helms feels like he tries to play the overly positive Clark Griswold that Chevy Chase perfected, though without any character development, Helms’ character is lacklustre. With all this being said the original was written by John Hughes and he just captured characters perfectly, so how can you really compare them to this one. Most of the jokes are either hit or miss. The jokes that miss are usually ones involving potty humour. The quirky characters played by Chris Hemsworth and Charlie Day are probably the highlights for me, especially Charlie Day. I still enjoyed myself with all the negatives aside, it just means I cannot recommend this film to anyone looking for a good movie.
2.5/5 – Stars
Robert Ring
KissTheMovies 