Viewed in
2013
Formats
HDTV
Premise
The Griswold family's cross-country drive to the Walley World theme park proves to be much more arduous than they ever anticipated.
Loved
Road trip comedy.
Liked
Goofy performances.
Thoughts
Three decades later it still held up extremely well.
I laughed out loud numerous times, especially in the scenes when the family was stuck in the car. Writer John Hughes was spot on in portraying the stinky claustrophobia of being stuck in the backseat for long periods of time. It gave me plenty of unpleasant/hilarious flashbacks of my childhood family road trips before GPS, Google, Gameboys, satellite radio, smartphones, credit card ubiquity, and mobile entertainment.
Even though it wasn't directed by him, Hughes' sense of humor shined abundantly throughout, with a little raunch (hi, Beverly D'Angelo's boobies!) and 1980's cartoony slapstick. Even though the characters often acted exaggeratedly, their silly behavior was still derived from the stresses of cross-country journeys.
Overall, the cast was spot on as well, furthering the comedy with fun goofy performances. Before there was Homer Simpson, there was Chevy Chase as the clueless/stubborn dad. As the mother, D'Angelo got her share of strong performances, playing off of Chase. It was amusing to see Anthony Michael Hall prior to typecast as geek roles. Granted, it was early in his career, but I was bummed that John Candy's role was so small.
It's interesting to see how younger generations would react to the humorous situations in Vacation. I wonder if they could still relate if there's less occurrence of road trips without navigation nor mobile distractions these days. For me personally, I had a blast reminiscing about such misery. Definitely an iconic American comedy film.
