Halfway into John Francis Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein’s Vacation, a reboot/sequel/remake of sorts of Harold Ramis’ 1983 National Lampoon movie of the same name, 40-something Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms) indirectly hits on his teenage son James (Skyler Gisondo) in an earnest attempt to play his wingman in front of his crush, Adena (Catherine Missal). The character thinks he’s sly and cool, and the joke is that he’s, of course, not. Ironically — but not in a funny way — a loud, socially tone-deaf dad making everyone uncomfortably tense is the best personification one can give for Goldstein and Daley’s misshapen directorial debut.
Like a dad talking potty-mouthed gibberish in an effort to impress his kids' friends, as he awkwardly throws around his hands before giving up and meagerly mumbles his goodbyes and crawls up the stairs to serenity, Vacation is yet another comedy unsure of where to go or what it’s doing. It’s inconsistently crass, insecure despite trying to look collected and desperately rehashing stale R-rated jokes as it scrambles for whatever chuckles it can get. It has no heart or passion, and despite the occasionally smart send-up or well-paced aside, it’s a road-trip romp where the tires prematurely busting, the sun unforgivably looms overhead and the passengers inside the car wait anxiously for the pick-up truck to take them back home.
Like Anthony Michael Hall, Jason Lively, Johnny Galecki, Ethan Embry and Travis Greer before him, Helms enters Rusty’s shoes, though he’s now not a child but a fully-grown father and preoccupied airline pilot who can’t connect to his love ones, including his aforementioned oldest son James, insufferable youngest child Kevin (Steele Stebbins) and bored wife Debbie (Christina Applegate). Upon overhearing how much his wife dreads revisiting their cabin this Memorial Day — the same place they've gone for the past decade or so — Rusty decides to forgo his plans and send his family on a trip to a place he'll never forget from his childhood, Walley World, in a cross-country trip similar to the one his father Clark (Chevy Chase) took his family on decades ago.
Anyone who has seen the first movie — and this Vacation makes an overstated point to stress to the young ones how this is not a necessity — knows things turned out far from well on that faithful adventure, and Rusty hasn't forgotten what terrible events went down then for him, his dad, his sister Audrey (now played by Leslie Mann) and their mother, Ellen (Beverly D’Angelo). But carrying his father's optimistic spirit in his blood, he thinks surely this trip will go better. Because this movie exists, though, we know that’s not the case.
Traveling 15,000 miles in their awkwardly designed German rent-a-car, raunchy shenanigans take place. Truckers are iterated. Fetus-infected waters are tampered. Scandalous college lives are unearthed. Items are stolen. Canoes are tempted to go off cliffs by mentally unstable river rafting guides named Chad (Charlie Day). Blood and puke are spilt. Temperamental feelings are directed towards family members, like Rusty’s impeccably charismatic, wealthy, Southern-breed anchorman brother-in-law Stone Crandall (Chris Hemsworth). Punches are thrown. Explicit language is yelled, repeatedly. And lessons about family bonding and being a good spouse are eventually learned as well, but that’s more or less an obligation.
It’s a shoot-at-whatever-moves approach, throwing everything from pubic hair sight gags, Asperger’s digs to one or two rape gags even at the screen as the filmmakers scream for the audience to laugh. For all it tries to stuff in nearly 100 minutes, though, it’s missing what made the original spark: reliability. For all the adult content found in the original, Ramis and screenwriter John Hughes still touched upon the desire every father wants to achieve: quality family time. Even though the references are somewhat outdated, the costumes are out-of-fashion and the Wagon Queen Family Truckster is even more an antique, it’s resonates to something anyone dragged across states can recognize despite the preposterous actions. That’s why it’s remembered and re-watched still today.
This Vacation, however, falls closer in line with the dishearteningly manufactured sequels to come (and, yes, I’m counting Christmas Vacation too!). It only cares about the gaffs, and tacks on the emotional beats just when it needs to call it a day. The message is tired, certainly, but it’s even more irritating solely for how little Daley and Goldstein care for it while spending their time hoarding in meta winks, callback-after-callback to the first film and uninspired sex puns. This is all to say this fifth installment to the series (I don’t qualify DVD release Christmas Vacation 2) lacks its own identity.
As writers, Daley and Goldstein’s produced screenplays make it evident that they have a few good gags, but those handful of good puns are constantly meandered alongside endlessly non-invigorated plotlines. They take from others — be it Swimming with Sharks with Horrible Bosses or the whole entire plot of the first Cloudy with the Chance of Meatballs with their sequel — and coast by on their winning premises, without adding anything other than poor insults and bland slapstick. As directors, they host a solid understanding of build-up and derailing expectations, but they never do anything exciting with their clever knowledge of comic structure. Also lacking is any zest or pulp, as they counterfeit their new-found director chairs further by poorly hidden green-screens, inexcusably lengthening sequences and routine staging.
If that weren’t enough to separate itself from the original’s goodwill, Helms also lacks Chase’s presence and everyman charm. This is made all the more apparent once the original lead enters this picture in the third act. The Office star almost makes up for this with his enthusiasm — something he shares with his co-stars, particularly a sly-grinning Hemsworth in his first out-and-out mainstream Hollywood comedy. They’re boisterous enthusiasm is delightfully shared by those handful of celebrities popping up for cameos throughout, most prominently during a rambunctious and admittedly funny Four Corners visit. This gives this washed-up lemon of a vehicle the fuel to stay on the road, but in seeing it putter on at a deliberately exhausted pace, it becomes all the more frustrating when it’s clear their travel time was misspent. All in all, this new Vacation is about as frustrating and car sickness-prone as spending tediously long car rides with your love ones, but with those you at least get the benefit of knowing you're going somewhere.