Vacation (2015)

* ½ out of ****

I won't lie.... I laughed. But I'll keep it in perspective.... not nearly as much as I should have.

“Vacation” finds Rusty Griswald (Chevy Chase's son in the original film series, now played by Ed Helms) all grown up with a family of his own. He is almost a carbon copy of his father, a good-hearted man trying to do right by his family, but with very few social graces and absolutely no concept of what is or is not appropriate. He overhears his wife Debbie (Christina Applegate) telling a dinner guest how much she and the children hate the cottage Rusty rents every summer, and he decides to recreate the trip to Wallyworld his dad took the family on in 1983.

Rusty gets stuck with his own version of the Griswald family truckster at the rental agency, and off they go. In the backseat are his two sons, the older of which is a very inward-looking kid and the younger is a bully that takes full advantage of his brother's kindliness. The brothers' relationship leads to many of the real laughs in the movie... I happened to watch this film with my 70 year old mother, who cracked me up by commenting that, “That young lad is a real asshole.”

As they travel across America the Griswalds run into problems similar to the original trip, including swimming in a sewage pond and nearly perishing at the hands of a suicidal white-water-rafting guide. Probably the most fun in the whole movie is when the family stops to visit Rusty's sister Audrey (Leslie Mann) and her husband Stone (Chris Helmworth). Stone pays a visit to the Griswald's bedroom to make sure they're comfortable that is really, really hilarious.

There are some terrible sequences that just don't work – the visit with mom and dad (Chase and Beverly D'Angelo) is painful, as is a stop at Debbie's old college. Couple that with the simple fact that with a couple of minor exceptions the characters are mean-spirited, stupid and unlikable, and you have a film that isn't even on the same plane of existence with the original. No question there are some really funny moments, but they are few enough that I can't even come close to really recommending the movie.

Worth seeing only for the purposes of comparing it to the original (no comparison) and Helmsworth's terrific couple of scenes. Other than that, completely forgettable.