Cast: Ed Helms, Christina Applegate, Skyler Gisondo, Steele Stebbins
Director: John Francis Daley, Jonathan M. Goldstein
Rating: 2.5 stars
In Vacation, the fictional Tartan Prancer rented by the Griswold family is the great running gag (and for what it’s worth, the most interesting character): It is of an Albanian-make, hence alien; its language controls are in Korean; the remote-control to the vehicle is full of buttons with strange, wordless icons whose function is unknown until engaged. As a result, at various points in the film, the car displays startling characteristics that throws the linear narrative of the film into disarray: It somersaults, its glass shatters, it drives off by itself and finally, it explodes.
The Griswold family is involved in the performance of a sterile, monotonous life in suburban Chicago. The loser-father works as a pilot in an economy airline, the mother and the two sons (two jokes, really: the older one is slightly effeminate, the younger one swears a lot) stand in formation waiting at home for him. One night at dinner, a family friend shows them pictures from a vacation to Paris.
This provokes Dad Griswold to take his family on a road-trip — as with the first entry in the Vacation series, 1983’s National Lampoon’s Adventure — to Wally World, a mythical theme park.
