Vacation (2015) *

Directed by:  John Francis Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein

Starring:  Ed Helms, Christina Applegate, Leslie Mann, Chris Hemsworth, Charlie Day, Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Steele Stebbins, Skylar Grisondo

What did we do to deserve this movie?    What did the actors do?    Was there a clamoring for a Vacation remake/reboot that I wasn't aware of?     Did both directors of this dreck equally believe that they were giving the viewing public a worthwhile product?     Questions.   Questions we have no answers for.    

Vacation, no matter whether a reboot or remake, is a movie that exists only to up the ante on gross-out humor.    We see vomiting, a cow run over by a quad, people bathing in "hot springs" that turn out to be raw sewage, bloody fights, bullying, various sexual escapades, a prosthetic penis, and no laughs.     There was more I'm sure I overlooked or erased from my memory.     The movie manages to squeeze in all of this crap within 95 minutes.     It even tries to wax sentimental at times, which only adds to my dislike of it.  

If you've seen National Lampoon's Vacation (1983) or any of its sequels, you know the plot of this Vacation.     The link is Rusty Griswold (Helms), who was played by Anthony Michael Hall in the original film and other actors in the sequels.     Rusty is an airline pilot who spends a lot of time away from home and wants to reconnect with his family.     Instead of vacationing at the family cabin no one likes, Rusty decides to drive cross country with his family to Walley World, the theme park Chevy Chase and company went through hell to get to in the original. 

Vacation makes the original seem subtle by comparison.     The original was a serviceable comedy and it had Christie Brinkley flirting with Chase from her red Ferrari.     No Brinkley here.     There is a woman in a fast car who flirts briefly with Helms, but her car is soon involved in a deadly wreck.    Ha ha.    It is amazing how tone deaf directors (and writers) Daley and Goldstein truly are.     What is funny about a deadly car accident?     Or a whitewater raft tour guide who plunges seemingly to his demise in a waterfall?     Or the poor cow smashed to smithereens?    Or the various jokes about pedophilia?    Or a cow that likes to eat hamburger and ribs?    (Yes, that would make the cow a cannibal...ha ha).

Helms and Applegate are affable actors who try mightily to get through Vacation in one piece.    They deserve better than this.    Everyone involved in the project does.    There are only so many ways you can show bodily fluids expelled from the body.     Applegate is forced to chug a pitcher of beer and then puke it up (along with yesterday's meals it seems) while trying to navigate an obstacle course.     Since when did disgusting equal funny?     I don't know where this started, but it has been going on for what feels like decades.

What we have here is another Vacation movie, which is tantamount to a party guest showing up that wasn't invited.     We are uncomfortable in its presence, but we don't want to cause a scene so we put up with it.     I have been told that I am hard to please when it comes to movies.     Perhaps that's true.    My expectations for Vacation were not high and it came in way below them.     Some laughs and a reasonable amount of tact and decency are not high expectations for a movie like Vacation.      Have we lowered the bar on comedies so much that ones without bodily fluid expulsions are a welcome relief?    Yes.