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Nothing tests a relationship quite like spending several days confined to the cramped quarters of a car while traveling across the country. Time and time again, Hollywood has tried to capture the highway hijinks of the cross country road trip—but few have done it quite as well as National Lampoon’s wacky family road trip extravaganza, Vacation.
Chevy Chase stars as Clark Griswold, a hard-working dad who’s eager to spend his two-week vacation bonding with his family while driving the 2460 miles from Illinois to California. The plan is to see the sights and visit a few relatives on their way to their final destination: family amusement park Walley World. With the family’s luggage loaded on their new Metallic Pea Family Truckster station wagon, Clark and his wife, Ellen (Beverly D’Angelo), hit the road with their two teens, Rusty (Anthony Michael Hall) and Audrey (Dana Barron). But their family bonding adventure quickly takes a wrong turn toward disaster.
Forget Andy and Joyce, Peter and Ethan, Charlie and Raymond, and even Harold and Kumar. The Griswolds are the quintessential road trippers. And Vacation isn’t just a road trip movie; it’s the road trip movie.
Anyone who’s ever suffered through a family road trip can relate to the trials and tribulations that the Griswolds face on their cross-country nightmare. What starts out simply enough—with the teens in the back seat rolling their eyes over Mom and Dad’s impromptu sing-along—quickly crumbles into a crazy mess of wrong turns and redneck cousins as the miles roll by and the tension continues to build inside the Truckster. The film is made up of short snippets of road trip catastrophes—each one more outrageous than the last. But even if everyone made it through your family road trips alive, you’ll still be able to identify with the awkwardness, the mishaps, and the sheer agony of being trapped in a car with your parents and siblings.
Like most road trip comedies, Vacation has its share of comic hits and misses, with some scenes more successful than others. But, through it all, the comedic cast will keep you riding along. Chase is unforgettable as the well-meaning dad with a wandering eye. D’Angelo is both lovable and lively as the original Hot Mom. And the kids are the perfect Everykids. Throw in brief but memorable performances by everyone from Eugene Levy to John Candy (and even a teenage Jane Krakowski), and you’ve got a wild (and often wildly funny) adventure that—unlike your own family vacations—you’ll actually want to revisit from time to time.
Blu-ray Review:
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of this outrageous family road trip, Warner Bros. has given Vacation a new Blu-ray release. Though you’ve probably seen it over and over again on basic cable, the Blu-ray release brings the not-so-family film back to all of its foul-mouthed, R-rated glory.
Overall, though, the release is pretty bare bones. The special features menu includes a commentary track, a short, 10-year-old introduction by Chevy Chase, Randy Quaid, and producer Matty Simmons, and a feature-length behind-the-scenes documentary. This feature isn’t for the casual viewer. After all, it’s nearly as long as the movie itself. But if you’d like to learn more about the cast and crew (from writer John Hughes to director Harold Ramis)—and the road trip involved in making this road trip flick—then it’s worth a look.
