There’s the “hot spring” that turns out to be raw sewage. Add a ravishing female sports car driver who pulls up next to Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms) and flirts herself all the way to a grotesque highway death. Then there’s the young brother (Steele Stebbins) who torments his far more delicate older brother (Skylar Grisondo) including using a hypodermic needle as a dart he throws at him in the fore-mentioned raw sewage lake.
Having fun yet?
The victimized mom in all of this is none other than Debbie (Christina Applegate of Married With Children fame). She must endure a husband who is as boring as Jeb Bush and Scott Walker combined. Rusty also is in way over his head since Debbie is basically looking to break out into far wilder libido terrain. She wouldn’t mind doing it with him but he’s clueless.
The family stops off at Debbie’s college so she can re-enact a frolicking, booze-driven sorority game. It’s unnervingly cliche-ridden but merely a prelude for what awaits Debbie once the family visits Rusty’s sister in Texas. There looms Rusty’s brother-in-law (Chris Hemsworth) his artificial prosthetic schlong recalling that of Jason Schwartzman in The Overnight, released a mere couple of weeks ago. Not for anything, but I’ve had quite enough of unfunny schlongs this month.
If you’re getting the idea Vacation feels obliged to push the envelope, you’d be right. However, in comedy, as in the stock market, it’s easy to keep score. Are there laughs here?….They’re frightfully few and far between. Helms, who reached a peak as the correspondent on the Daily Show many moons ago, then slid into The Hangover and Terrible Bosses franchises, is mostly irritating here.
By the time Rusty’s family hits San Francisco to visit his Dad (Chevy Chase in a monumentally insignificant appearance) the tally of groans is far more higher than that of guffaws. Even a bravely resilient Applegate can’t save this pile of deplorable rubbish. No matter how hard it tries to be on the edge of gross-out, Vacation exists merely in the throes of the hapless harebrained. The 1983 original, with Chase in the lead and Anthony Michael Hall as the teen son, while no prize itself, looks like a 4-star Billy Wilder comedy next to this paltry dreck.