Spitting At Greatness

Vacation (2015)

How many more of these stupid reboots/remakes is Hollywood going to subject us to? Yet another one released this year and I have a few things to say about this latest. Let me start by giving a bit of a background on this film on film level and a personal level. In 1983 writer John Hughes (Home Alone, The Breakfast Club) created a screenplay based on a short story he wrote titled Vacation ’58 which is based on a childhood vacation with his family.  Directed by the late Harold Ramis (Caddyshack), National Lampoon’s Vacation became one of the best comedies ever and spawning three sequels. The film is also special to me on a personal level due to the fact that it is one film my father and I can always watch together and laugh.

The film has become so popular and successful that I would have thought the film belongs on the ‘untouchable’ list in Hollywood, as far as remakes. Sadly it looks like I was dead wrong. Which makes me wonder…is there a movie ever made that is untouchable? Are we ever going to see that Godfather remake or Jaws reboot? Not only does the thought of no untouchable films infuriate me, but the fact that this particular remake shows so little respect to the original that it made me sick.

This Vacation is every bit of a reboot/remake that I despise. The film follows an older Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms The Hangover film series) and his family across country to Wally World. The hope here is that Rusty can spark up some magic in his marriage and bring his sons closer together. Does the film achieve this simple task in the end? Yes, but not before making a mockery of what made the original remarkable. Riddled with awkward scenes, over use of sexual humor, and just plain disgusting humor the film doesn’t do anything but remind me on why I don’t like modern comedies. The original film does a perfect job of making Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) a sympathetic, albeit unlucky, character. Clark just wants to take his family on vacation and yet Murphy’s Law comes into effect (where everything that can go bad, will go bad). This film just goes out of its way to make these characters look stupid and puts them in situations that are highly unbelievable. Helms plays the same character he always does and his wife Debbie played by Christina Applegate (Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues) is just extremely cookie-cutter boring. Neither of the sons, James (Skyler Gisondo Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb) nor Kevin (Steele Stebbins A Haunted House 2) are humorous either. Oh and by the way, I don’t think it is funny when I twelve year old cusses as profusely as Kevin does through 85% of the movie.

Why do we, as the audience, keep paying for crap like this? Do we really think that it is ever going to be better than the original? I know that I have touched on this subject ad nauseam so I won’t go through it yet again, so I will be taking a break from the remakes/reboots for quite a while. This film wasn’t funny, not even amusing at times. It was basically a slap in the face of the comedic genius that John Hughes and Harold Ramis created in 1983.

The Verdict: I’m Sure You Can Guess.