Wednesday, August 12, 2015

MOVIE REVIEW: VACATION (2015)

2



From IMDB:

Storyline

Hoping to bring his family closer together and to recreate his childhood vacation for his own kids, an adult Rusty Griswold takes his wife and two sons on a cross-country road trip to Walley World. Needless to say, things don't go quite as planned.

Rating: R (for crude and sexual content and language throughout, and brief graphic nudity)
In Theaters: Jul 29, 2015 Wide
US Box Office: $37.1M
Runtime: 1 hr. 39 min.
Warner Bros. Pictures - Official Site


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These are the original Griswolds and you're better off watching their vacation. ©Warner Bros. Pictures

This Vacation movie is no vacation... 

So I caught this movie last Monday. Didn't have a particularly bad or dull Monday, just a blah kind of Monday that you'll never remember. So I thought this would be a nice movie to end the day with. Of course I had heard that this movie isn't all that good even if I did avoid looking up reviews. Just the headlines that I saw were enough to give me that impression. The only thing I had seen about this movie is the trailer and the special commercial that the studio released featuring the car that the Griswolds would use in this movie, the Tartan Prancer. The trailer looked funny enough. The commercial for the silly car was interesting. But then I went and watched the movie and it was neither funny nor interesting. It was at most mildly, mildly amusing. 

This was mildly funny. This movie managed to make poo jokes mildly funny. ©Warner Bros. Pictures

The movie picks up somewhat 30 odd years after the first one I guess with Rusty Griswold and his family. Instead of going to Rusty's (Ed Helms) favorite vacation spot, a cabin in Cheboygan, Michigan which they apparently go to every year since having kids, he decides to take them on a road trip to Walley World after hearing his wife Debbie (Christina Applegate) sigh over hearing their neighbors vacation to Paris. The impending road trip will be done in the newly rented Tartan Prancer a car made in some Eastern European country that's a pathetic attempt at a joke. 

This car is so bad it insults everything related to it and the movie it's in. ©Warner Bros. Pictures

So off they go in their ridiculous rented car and in between getting to their final destination and Rusty's hope of bonding with his family they get into one ridiculous and not very funny mishap or other which doesn't get as much laughs nor are they original. The movie is basically the same as the original movie with little to no originality at all and is about as funny as reading a lawyer's journal when you actually are a lawyer.

So Chris Hemsworth probably did this movie so he could do this scene. ©Warner Bros. Pictures

I vaguely remember the first Vacation movie which had Chevy Chase play the role of Rusty's dad. I have this impression that it was a fun and silly movie. And of course it was sort of original for its day but most of all the ridiculous things that happened to the Griswolds on their first trip to Walley World seemed a lot more believable compared to the stuff that happened to Rusty and his family. The other thing that felt a lot more natural was the relationship between the family members. Parents acted the way we expected them to and the kids acted like the teenagers they are. The parents in this movie seemed sort of pathetic and the kids roles where the younger one bullies the elder seemed a little hard to believe and a little forced. Actually most of the things in this movie seemed forced. From the not so funny scenes and set-ups to the dialogue. It all had that trying too hard to be funny feeling to me. I went with someone who had not seen the original and she said this movie felt like it was trying too hard to be funny. 

Yeah the paid homage to the Christie Brinkley scene in the original movie. Scene for scene. ©Warner Bros. Pictures

There's nothing good about this movie. The performances given by everyone involved is forgettable. It would seem that the only reason to be part of this movie is to get paid whatever amount of money they could get and nothing more. Chris Hemsworth who's last movie I remember being in was Age of Ultron was so hopelessly bad I think the only reason he joined the cast was not just for the money but to have the opportunity to walk  around on screen in tight boxer shorts with a huge fake penis for 2 whole minutes. The other cameos were so unimaginative that you forget who they were as soon as you walk out the cinema.

The original Griswold parents showed up. They looked like they were tired of being in this movie the moment you see them. ©Warner Bros. Pictures

Honestly, there is nothing good about this movie. Everything about this movie has been done before but that being said they still could have done a better job at it. Everything felt forced, the dialogue and everything else predictable. There's just nothing good I can say about this movie. In fact, I've run out of things to say. I usually ramble on but this time I'm not going to bother.

This is what this movie really is. ©Warner Bros. Pictures

I didn't like this movie. I had a few chuckles maybe but that's it. I'm giving this movie a 2 out of 5. Tonight I'm going to be watching Pixels. Heard that one got bad reviews too. And that they basically stole the idea from an episode of Futurama.



HEY THANKS KLIPS.MY FOR THE PREVIEW PASSES TO WATCH VACATION!



2 comments:

  1. Helms and Applegate are hilarious

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    Replies
    1. Hey Thomas! Well, they were okay considering the material they had to work with. But I've seen better from them in their other comedies. Hope you're having a good weekend.

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