Directed by: Harold Ramis
Starring: Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Randy Quaid, Imogene Coca, Anthony Michael Hall, Dana Barron, Christie Brinkley, John Candy
"Getting there is half the fun," says Clark Griswold (Chase) who treks in the family's new station wagon from Chicago to Walley World in California, a Disneyesque theme park. He has no clue what he is in for and so goes National Lampoon's Vacation, which spawned three sequels and a loathsome 2015 remake. The movie is a series of misadventures caused by a.) Clark's incompetence b.) Clark's general niceness which people immediately take advantage of or c.) Just plain bad luck.
Most of it is amusing, while the addition of Christie Brinkley as a hottie in a racing sports car is never an unwelcome sight.
Chase's hapless Clark is a devoted family man (although that is put to the extreme test by Brinkley) with a loving wife Ellen (D'Angelo) and two teenage kids (Hall and Barron). His family vacation gets off to a rough start when the new car he ordered didn't arrive in time to the dealership and he is stuck with an ungainly station wagon which takes a pounding during the 2000-plus mile trip to California. Clark finds himself in a St. Louis ghetto late at night after a wrong turn off the expressway, then in the presence of freeloading cousin Eddie (Quaid) who asks, without hesitation, for a $52.000 loan. At Eddie's, the family is joined by the cantankerous Aunt Edna (Coca), who hitches a ride to Phoenix, which leads to further complications. To list them all here would spoil the fun and would be entirely too time-consuming.
Chase plays Clark with less of an edge than other films. He is a guy things happen to, but he keeps on going with pluck and determination. His family tries to be supportive, but how many run-ins with danger can they tolerate before begging for Clark to turn around and go home? It is refreshing to see Chase lose the snark and take up the reins of pure ordinariness. I'm sure anyone reading this review has dealt with vacation snafus such as flat tires, wrong turns, motels which looked a lot nicer in the brochure, and of course churlish hotel clerks who won't take a check. Vacation takes on an identifiable quality while of course placing the Griswolds in situations of ascending craziness.
Vacation stumbles after Brinkley leaves the scene and its finale at Walley World is a letdown, but we built up enough goodwill with the Griswolds to walk away from the film with a smile. The sequels and the remake do not provide the same result.
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