"Vacation" Review

The Vacation remake shakes up just enough of the jokes to keep from feeling like a straight re-tread of the Chevy Chase classic. That said, filmmakers John Francis Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein have stripped away all of the heart that made the original a classic, resulting in a film that, while funny at times, feels very hollow as a whole.

The plot features the exact same skeleton as before; to get his family out of a rut, a father obsessively drags his reluctant family to a theme park 2,500 miles away. Only this time, Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms) leads the way with a new car, his two sons, and a wife who's clearly been cast for her resemblance to Beverley D'Angelo (Christina Applegate). Along the way, the family encounters a sorority house party, dirty motel rooms, cute girls in red cars, a strange trucker, a depressed rafting instructor, inept state troopers, and, of course, relatives. Leslie Mann plays Rusty's sister Audrey, who has settled down in Texas with a handsome weatherman (Chris Hemsworth). Hemsworth's overbearing, awkward Stone Crandall swings a big stick [if you catch my drift], but he could never be a match for the hijinks wrought by Cousin Eddie (Randy Quaid).

On this vacation, I frequently found myself laughing out loud. I respect the writers for making the script juuuuust different enough that it doesn't feel like exactly the same movie over again. Applegate is given much more material to work with on her own than D'Angelo had, which is refreshing. Her stunt at the sorority house is probably the funniest bit of physical comedy I've seen in ages. Here I sit, laughing just thinking about it!

Cameos are a-plenty, and I'd say just about all of them steal their respective scenes. Be on the lookout for lots of familiar faces!

The young actors who play Rusty's sons are serviceable. They aren't quite as annoying as the boys in Jurassic World, but they're pretty close. As for Rusty himself, Helms is hard to buy as the goofball dad. He lacks the wit and charm that made Chase so memorable in the original. I even thought Jason Sudeikis did Helms' schtick much better in We're the Millers.

Although there are several individual moments in Vacation that are very funny, it never quite feels like they're building to anything worthwhile. Most of the jokes might in fact be construed as mean-spirited; just so for the sake of being different from the original movie. That turns out to be a horrible idea. While that kind of humor can work when done properly, in Vacation it strips the story of the heart that made National Lampoon's Vacation a cornerstone of cinematic comedy. Thus, this remake is rendered superfluous and tough to recommend. See it only if you're a big fan of poop jokes and graphic sexual innuendos.

PROS:
-Applegate shines
-Sorority house scene
-Great cameos
-Some fresh jokes

CONS:
-Cheap, mean-spirited sense of humor overall
-Ed Helms
-No heart = Weak payoff

C-