Vacation (2015), R, ★

They are the Griswolds. 

"Holiday Ro-ooo-ooo-ooo-ad!"

Remember the nostalgic 1983 movie by the late great director Harold Ramis? National Lampoon's Vacation is a memorable and fantastic comedy that takes a family road trip and turns that upside down with unfortunate events regarding hotel rooms, a credit card fiasco, a dead aunt and dog (spoilers), and well, the ending in which Wally World is closed due to maintenance. We all have to thank Harold Ramis and the late John Hughes, the writer, for inserting such nice and comic balance to the family road trip that could unfortunately occur at any time in any sense of the word. However, they must be rolling in their graves because this stand-alone film is an abomination filled with gross and excruciating jokes that we have to conceive from the screen.

Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms) is a regional airline pilot that is blessed with a good family like his father. He is married to Debbie (Christina Applegate) and has two sons, James and Kevin (Skyler Gisondo and Steele Stebbins). Kevin is older and awkward and James is bullish. That night, when the Griswolds have dinner with their neighbors, the Petersons (Keegan Michael Key and Regina Hall), Rusty overhears a conversation between Debbie and the neighbors that she is disappointed that they take the same vacation repeatedly going to their cabin in Cheboygan and that she would like to do something different.

Rusty rents a hybrid car from Ukraine because that is the only car available to take a family road trip to Wally World, so he can recreate his vacation from when he was a kid. They are on their way and Rusty sings "Kiss From a Rose" about three times, stop by Debbie's old college and see her sorority as she is a beer legend, James sees a cute girl, stop by a "hot spring", and meet Rusty's sister, Audrey (Leslie Mann) and her husband, Stone (Chris Hemsworth), a successful handsome weatherman. But, every time that they stop at a motel or another location, something wrong always happens just like the first movie.

They are at Wally World! YAY!

Is this what it comes to? An R-rated comedy that is filled with such gross and crude gags to entertain the audience? This movie does not define the family in any shape or form. It's more like a bad sequel to We're The Millers. But Millers was nearly an entertaining road comedy with some funny dialogue but the difference is that there are not much crude jokes except a spider biting someone else's genitals and a scene in a tent. That's it. In this movie, we get bathroom jokes, penis jokes, murder jokes and sex jokes. The movie is too self-aware to push the envelope that it becomes frustrating to watch all these talented actors to suffer through all this material.

Clark Griswold is a lovable father but he is sort of a jerk and Ed Helms does not really match that description because he is a bit too nice and charming for this personality and I felt that he is miscast. He does not resemble as much charisma as the other actors from the other Vacation movies, even though there is a joke regarding that. Applegate is fine as the wife but she looked bored and miserable in this movie. The "young son" got on my nerves with his rude attitude and goes a long way. Leslie Mann is underused as I wanted to see a bit more of her character and Chris Hemsworth plays a one-joke character that has a few funny lines. (Just watch the red band trailer to see what that joke is.) Even though it is great to see Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo back as Clark and Ellen Griswold, the scenes are poignant enough but it felt like the filmmakers rushed them into production just to share scenes with Helms and Applegate.

The last 15-20 minutes are fine enough that the tone is balanced. If it were not for those minutes, the movie would have a "zero-star" abysmal movie. The major problem with this movie is that the tone shifts constantly that directors and writers Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley cannot make up their minds sometimes and seems that they mostly improvise on the spot. They seemed so caught up in writing the crude jokes that they mostly forgot what the Griswolds were described as as a normal suburban family. They are unlikable characters that we do not give a crap about. This movie is constructive jokes regarding bodily functions and waste around a narrative. It is a lazy piece of filmmaking. Watch National Lampoon's Vacation and Christmas Vacation instead.

*