NO!
No, no, no! Bad Hollywood! No biscuit!

Vacation(1983) was a comedy classic. European Vacation was amusing. Christmas Vacation is the greatest movie about Christmas, ever.* Vegas Vacation was a fun revisiting of the family & franchise. This is not those.

Do you watch Modern Family? Did you only watch back when it was funny? Either way, Phil & Claire Dunphy are all you need to know about the relationship between Rusty Griswold & his wife, Deb, who's the exact same character as Claire. Christina Applegate looks good and does a pretty good job in her role, but Ed Helm's Rusty is basically just adding his butt-monkey character from the Hangover movies and "The Office" to the stock character comedy film dad. Competent, but not apparently successful, in spite of his income solely providing an apparently comfortable lifestyle for his admittedly small family, he tries too hard or cares too much and tries to be the epitome of a vague modern ideal of fatherhood, sacrificing his children's respect for their approval, and of course, getting neither. The kids include an artistically dorky teenage son with a number of effeminate traits who is bullied and abused by his pre-teen little brother, whose character traits seem to be limited to ridiculing his brother. Their entire characterizations for the whole film seem calculated to set up a total of maybe 1.5 jokes. All the funny parts are in the trailers. Cameos from other well-known actors just seem like a waste of potential, such as Charlie Day's appearance as a whitewater rafting guide who gets the Griswolds on a really bad personal day, or Chris Hemsworth as that requisite of all comedy films, the ultra-successful macho guy whose every action is calculated to make the protagonist feel inadequate. He lives in Texas, which I assume is supposed to be inherently funny if you have some sort of grudge against Texas.

Speaking of Hemsworth, he plays Rusty's brother-in-law, meaning he's married to Audrey. This time, she's played by Leslie Mann. Rusty & Audrey were both background characters in the older movies, playing straight men to Chevy Chase & Randy Quaid, but they were pretty much equally important. In "Christmas," Audrey was definitely a stronger contributor. With that in mind, she is rather shamefully neglected in this film, being restricted to a single episode on the new Griswolds' odyssey, and overall having a rather sad fate, her character arc summed up in a throwaway line near the end. Okay, it's not like the other four movies made us desperate to know about her, but there is no less reason for long-time fans to be invested in her fate than for Rusty. If you expect us to care about one of Clark's kids just because he was in the other movies, why would you expect us to be indifferent to other one? Aside from the Griswolds' destination of Walleyworld (though IIRC a particular roller coaster gets more mentions than the park itself), the visit to Audrey and a brief sad cameo by Clark & Ellen that makes Chase & D'angelo look ready for the glue factory, and a parody reference to Clark's flirtation with Christie Brinkley, there is really not anything here to connect the film to the original. And yeah, that seems like a lot, but the reality is that it comes across as pretty forced. Change the Griswold's names, drop the name of the park, and you don't need to pay royalties to the estate of John Hughes. Clark & Ellen are running a bed & breakfast, and doing it very badly. Why? I guess someone thought it would be funny? And they're no longer in the Midwest, they are now in San Francisco. Why? Because it would be a convenient stop-off on the way to Southern California for their son's family? Except there is a GPS map shown early in the movie where the family goes out of their way to take a route that stays as far from San Francisco as possible. There is no reason for the elder Griswolds' situation at all, and it even strains the plot to fit in the younger family's visit.

I have to admit there were a couple of funny parts, but as I mentioned before, most of them were in the trailers, or telegraphed by an overly elaborate set-up. And they did tend to have very long set-ups, such as the recurring appearance of a menacing truck driver inspired by "Joy Ride", or a confrontation with the law at the Four Corners monument (which has basically nothing to do with the Griswolds). Most of the jokes, however, are sight gags involving genitalia, or tired exaggerations of the hardships of travel. As an example of the latter, they make a big deal in the beginning about the obscure brand of rental car they take on their trip, with nonsensical and incomprehensible features, and then seem to run out of ideas for the car early in the trip.

The sad thing is, however, that comedy movies are so awful these days, that if you watch a lot of them, this is not going to compare too unfavorably. Compared to Helms' other work, it's no "Hangover", but I don't think it's that much worse than "Hangover 2". Unfortunately, this one deliberately chose to evoke a much better film that stood out in an era of much better comedy. We're talking John Hughes and Harold Ramis in their prime, for crap's sake! Did this crew really think they were even a little bit worthy to share the name?

*Die Hard doesn't count. Die Hard is a Christmas movie, but Christmas Vacation is a movie ABOUT Christmas. By contrast, for example, Home Alone is a movie set ON Christmas, that is neither a Christmas movie nor about Christmas. I suspect Love Actually might also fall into that category. I would also put White Christmas with them too, ironically, considering one of Chase's funnier lines from CV.