Vacation (2015)

Just go to Six Flags instead. At least you’ll get to see a dancing old dude.

After spending many vacations with his family, Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms) now feels that it’s about time he took his own family out to the one and only place he loved as a kid: Walley World. Problem is, nobody in his family is nearly as siked as he is; his wife, Debbie (Christina Applegate), is starting to grow tired of the lame vacations, while their oldest son, James (Skyler Gisondo), constantly gets picked-on by their youngest, Kevin (Steele Stebbins). Though there are many odds working against it, Rusty still finds a way to make sure that everybody gets together and embarks on this little trip where they’ll meet all sorts of lovely characters along the way. One of whom is Rusty’s sister, Audrey (Leslie Mann), who is all grown-up now and is married to a local weatherman, Stone Crandall (Chris Hemsworth), whose absolute stunning and handsome looks seem to bring out the worst in every woman around him – most importantly, Debbie, which Rusty has a real problem with.

My god! Where has the time gone?!?

Today, August 23, 2015, marks the official last day of my summer vacation. To be honest, this summer, as a whole, has been a fun, exciting, memorable, and lovely time that reminds me why summer in and of itself matters so much to begin with and why I’m happy to at least have some sort of freedom left in my life to where I can do the sort of things I do during the summer. That could mean a huge list of things like going out to the bars, drinking with my friends, listening to good music, working every now and then, and most of all, going to the movies.

The reason I state all of this because it just proves to how forgettable a movie like Vacation may be, even in a summer as memorable as the one I just had.

But “forgettable” doesn’t always mean “terrible”, or “wretched”, it can sometimes just mean that a movie isn’t entirely the greatest thing ever created, but at the same time, still isn’t all that good. It’s just slap-dab in the middle of mediocrity and that’s exactly why Vacation is the kind of movie, while I may not remember having seen in a few years, still did the fine service of being a comedy that, once, or twice, or hell, maybe more than three times, made me laugh. Granted, it’s not always that easy and it’s not always as hard, either, but Vacation, with a few bits here and there, had me laugh-out-loud to where it was noticeable and known to those around me that I was indeed laughing at what co-writers and co-directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley were doing.

However, if you take into account the fact that nearly every other line in this movie is supposed to be a joke, a gag, or contain at least some bit of humor, the math gets a little shoddy. For instance, if 100% of this movie is filled to the brim with jokes, and if I only laughed for about six-to-ten of those jokes, then surely, the grading-scale cannot be too positive. It’s hard to say how much this movie made me laugh, other than, it just didn’t really do it for me at times and at others, it did.

So above all, the movie is a perfect 50%. Meaning, it’s not too bad, but it’s not too good either.

“Something” is on Ed Helms’ shirt and it’s HILARIOUS.

Most of where Vacation works is in how bizarre and truly random Goldstein and Daley allow for their material to get. There’s a chunk of celebrity cameos that occur along the way, and while not all of them work, there are a few that brought some fun and excitement to the screen, if only due to the fact that it was so odd, that it just worked. Charlie Day has a sequence that’s like this, as well as does a certain someone who I won’t name that drives a truck throughout the movie, but other than them two, most of the cameos fall flat. Some of them come out of nowhere and it’s cool to see just who Goldstein and Daley are able to bring in for this, but sometimes, it just seems like a wasted opportunity on jokes that seem to fall flat.

They don’t all do, like I’ve stated before. But when they do, it’s obvious that Goldstein and Daley are trying a tad too hard.

And this doesn’t necessarily hurt the main cast as much, although they too definitely suffer from the script not being able to keep up with their energy. Ed Helms’ shtick by now isn’t over-played, as much as it needs some sort of livening-up and his portrayal as an older Rusty doesn’t do him that sort of justice. Still, Helms clearly seems to be trying here and it’s better than just seeing him sleep-walk through something. Same goes for Christina Applegate who, thankfully, gets a few opportunities to prove that this isn’t just a man’s affair and that she’s able to be funny, too. Problem is, it’s on a throw-up gag that gets a bit old, a bit quicker than it should have. They both have fine chemistry between one another, but once the movie starts to get more serious about their marriage, it seems like it’s just something to fall back on, rather than deserved, or as a way to stretch these characters out anymore.

As Rusty’s sister and brother-in-law, Leslie Mann and Chris Hemsworth are sadly, saddled with a one-joke the whole way through and it’s sort of a shame that they weren’t able to stretch their wings out and do more. We know for sure that Mann is hilarious when she wants to be, and Hemsworth can be, too, but he’s just not allowed to do much of anything funny here. The whole joke surrounding him is that he’s this huge, sexy man-hunk, who also happens to have a ginormous dong. So basically, he’s playing Chris Hemsworth – the man every woman loves, and every guy so passionately despises.

Now where’s the humor in that? That’s real life speaking!

Consensus: Occasionally funny, but too often, Vacation feels as if it’s missing its mark of not allowing the talented cast to own up to their full potential, nor really allowing for the comedy to settle every now and again.

5 / 10

Spoiler alert. I guess.

Photo’s Credit to: IMDB, AceShowbiz