Vacation: Reasonably entertaining addition to the Lampoons franchise

Ok so it isn't officially a National Lampoon's release because they abandoned that back in the 90's. It is undeniable because the main character "Rusty" appeared in the original Vacation film back in 1983 where the Griswold family is on a road trip to the Walley World theme park which is exactly the same story as the original film.

In this one, Ed Helms is a grown up Rusty Griswold and he is an airline pilot with a relatively mundane life and he has a semi-dysfunctional family the same as the original Griswolds.

This movie was released in 2015 but since I don't really go to cinemas much anymore or even hear about things that are in cinemas, I was unaware that this movie existed until yesterday. In my mind, it was a 2022 release and of course was wrong.

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I'll start off by saying that it is not necessary to be familiar with the Vacation series or even the original one in order to enjoy or understand this film. There is no great lore or backstory that is going to enhance your ability to understand this and there is no fantastic story here. Basically, a family decides to "mix things up" with their annual vacation by traveling cross-country by car to revisit the theme park that began it all, Walley World. Along the way we meet up with some of the original cast members but thankfully, they don't make them too much of part of the story. Mostly, we just focus on the current Griswold family and the mishaps that they encounter along the way as they make their way to California from Chicago.

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Most of the humor could be considered slapstick and not terribly clever. For one thing, the focus an awful lot on the nature of the only vehicle that Rusty could find for rent and it is an Albanian model of car that probably isn't even a real company. The problems that they have with the car such as not understanding the features of it is something that appears time and time again and while it is funny at first it gets old pretty fast. For example, the GPS gets stuck on a foreign language which is very aggressive with them and the first 4 times they are shouted at by the GPS you get a chuckle out of me, but 217 times later and the fact that their destinations now include Korean subtitles just gets pretty old. They also have literal "poo" humor in this... is that punching down?

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The teenage romance that Rusty's kid encounters on the road is directly lifted from the script of the original film and in my mind, this is just kind of lazy storytelling. I guess I can understand why they would do it though because I would imagine that most of the people that watched this film aren't even familiar with the original story. For those of us that are it just seemed kind of hokey though.

This film ended up doing very well at the box-office and I can only presume that this has a lot to do with the star power of Christina Applegate and Ed Helms and not necessarily because it is a good film and it certainly isn't an innovative one.

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There's a ton of cameos by other comedians in this and this is for the most part what keeps the story moving. If it weren't for these surprise cameos I think I would have enjoyed the movie a lot less. Every 10 minutes or so some big name star ends up in the movie for a few minutes or so and the Griswold's interactions with them is what keeps the story moving.

Should I watch it?

If you are looking for something low-commitment that is going to provide you with a laugh or two I think that this could be something that could bring you a bit of amusement. Like I mentioned before the overall story isn't anything to get excited about but the cameos and the fact that things keep moving pretty quick keep the pace fast and therefore you don't really have a chance to get bored. When I was done with it I thought it was OK, but I also occasionally enjoy dumb comedies and this is definitely that. If you require your films to have some originality or artistic vision in order to enjoy it, Vacation is almost completely devoid of that.