The Griswolds always were a respectable bunch.
For even the most ludicrous aspirations of clan pater familias Clark through the original stretch of “Vacation” flicks that dominated the Eighties, their exploits largely fell into the category of bad things happening to good people.
Seeing any of them pushed to their breaking point was a way to let us laugh at the kinds of stress that generally are no laughing matter.
So when each member of the latter-day “Vacation” — starring Ed Helms as the grown-up version of Rusty from the earlier franchise features — is written specifically for easy laughs, we no longer see ourselves in this family.
Instead, we see those easy laughs coming from miles away, their presence advertised like signs on the highway en route to Wally World.
Rusty is just like dear old dad in that he wants to win over his family with a killer summer vacation. But wife Debbie (Christina Applegate) is sick of their usual cabin retreat, and their sons James (Skyler Gisondo) and Kevin (Steele Stebbins) certainly seem ready for a change.
So why aren’t these Griswolds the everyman Griswolds we’ve come to expect? For starters, Rusty is more sadsack than short on luck, which cheapens him in the viewers’ eyes — he may be mad as hell about people walking all over him, but those emotional wounds seem largely self-inflicted.
Christina Applegate’s Debbie, just like Beverly D’Angelo in the films before her, is the glue that tenuously holds things together, yet her only character developments involve her sexually adventurous past (discovered during a stop at her old sorority house) and way she pines for her sexy rancher brother-in-law Stone (Chris Hemsworth).
And their two kiddos? The guitar-strumming, wish-journaling James is a prototypical target for bullying, and the big-mouthed little brother Kevin exists almost exclusively to pick fun at him. It’s not so much a sibling rivalry as it is contrived character building, even if the tables eventually turn in their imbalance of power.
In fact, so much about what makes “Vacation” tolerable are laughs that could work in any road movie. Numerous gags involve the family’s quadruple-mirrored Albanian rental car and its strange assortment of buttons on the key fob and dash, each leading to calamity. The ride also comes equipped with a CB radio, which Kevin uses to insult a trucker who then stalks Los Griswolds across the country.
But even some simple attempts at comedy just don’t sit right. A beautiful lady motorist is flattened off-screen by an oncoming truck just after flirting across lanes with Rusty — if you’ve seen the TV ads, you’ve seen this scene. It’s a copycat of another joke in the same film — one involving Rusty, a four-wheeler and a steer on Stone’s ranch — that simply exists for shock value, which modern audiences have been trained to respond to with semi-nervous laughter. Jumping from laughing at Rusty’s misfortunes and periodic pratfalls all the way to guffawing at a grisly highway death is a leap most viewers shouldn’t be asked to make.
But that’s the tact of this R-rated “Vacation” — whereas ole Clark’s Christmas Eve rant has been a snoozefest for TV censors in the decades that have gone by as it’s enjoyed syndicated glory, Helms’ outing as Griswold patriarch unleashes F-bombs without reservation. Some of them land with impact, but they build a tonal ferocity for “Vacation” that doesn’t endear any of the characters to us — they simply remind those of us with short tempers and loose lips just how badly we can be jerks at times.
But “Vacation” is no cautionary tale. It’s a comedy — a comedy about Rusty and Debbie having a romantic evening stymied by a cheap hotel shower looking like a scene out of “Silent Hill,” or Debbie spewing a superhuman amount of vomit after a “Chug Run” at her alma mater.
And in case you’re wondering, there’s no mention of “National Lampoon’s” anywhere in the title or the film. But “Vacation” is just as crude as some of the straight-to-video titles of late that have worn the “National Lampoon” prefix, including “Strip Poker,” “Dorm Daze 2” and the “Van Wilder” franchise.
But if cheap laughs and nostalgia are enough to feel like you haven’t been cheated at the multiplex, you’ll be happy to know both are in large supply in this sequel-cum-reboot of the Griswold family. Even the old Griswold Wagon Queen Family Truckster returns from its sabbatical in Papa Clark’s garage.
No matter where this franchise goes, we’ll always have the memories.
“Vacation” is rated R. Running time: One hour, 57 minutes. Two and a half stars out of five.