Vacation (2015)
Directed by John Francis Daley
Hoping to bring his family closer together and to recreate his childhood vacation for his own kids, a grown up Rusty Griswold takes his wife and their two sons on a cross-country road trip to the coolest theme park in America, Walley World. Needless to say, things don't go quite as planned.
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3 films that influenced Vacation
What critics say influenced Vacation
In a meta scene reminiscent of 21 Jump Street, Rusty acknowledges that there is an “original vacation,” but he says this “new vacation” will stand on its own.
I suppose we have Phil Lord and Christopher Miller to thank for this attitude of winking, self-referential (and self-deprecating) cynicism: their take on 21 Jump Street made it possible for the hip to reframe unoriginality as an ironic pose.
That’s not to say that bad taste humour can’t be fun (as in the Ted movies) but when it feels like it’s trying too hard, then what follows smacks of desperation, especially given the tired nature of the storytelling.
However, like the "Ted" and "Family Guy" creator, Goldstein and Daley don't have the maturity or unique insight to make handling that kind of material remotely interesting or funny.
Another key difference is how the Hughes/Ramis original emanated a genuine sense of sweetness for the fumbling Griswold family, but the inspiration for the harsher "Vacation" clearly stems from "The Hangover," which Daley and Goldstein channeled when they rewrote their first screenplay to "Horrible Bosses."
Writer-directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley (who previously collaborated on the scripts Horrible Bosses and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone) make their feature directorial debut with Vacation, copying not just the road-trip setup but also the original’s affectionate-yet-jaundiced sendup of the All-American, middle-class banality of the family vacation.
The screenwriters making their directorial debuts, Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley (“Horrible Bosses”), are clearly camp followers, picking up clues for their script from Hughes’ original and slavishly copying the latest trends in R-rated comedies in their avid pursuit of crudity and potty-mouth dialogue.
Corralling a new generation of family members for another ill-fated trek toward that theme-park mecca known as Walley World, this new “Vacation” leans heavily on franchise nostalgia — with multiple cover versions of Lindsay Buckingham’s “Holiday Road” theme song and token cameos for original stars Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo — but trades the earlier films’ endearing buffoonery for a cheap nastiness reminiscent of writers (and first-time directors) Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley ’s “Horrible Bosses.”
Screenwriters Jonathan M. Goldstein and John Francis Daley, whose credits include the Horrible Bosses movies and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone , make an inauspicious directorial debut, relying heavily on nasty gross-out humor and turning Rusty and his family into unappealing idiots.
One of those writers/directors is Wheeling native John Francis Daley, who also wrote "Horrible Bosses" and "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone" and starred on "Freaks and Geeks."