To put it as bluntly as possible, you do not need to see this movie.
It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do. As a human being you are worth something, and as such, your time is worth something. You should cherish that time and spend it on something other than this movie.
“Vacation” is a loose sequel to the Chevy Chase film of the same name. Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms), who is the son from the original movie, his wife Debbie (Christina Applegate), and his sons James (Skyler Gisondo) and Kevin (Steele Stebbins) go on an emotionally flat and generally unfunny trip across America to reach the mythical Walley World.
What’s most surprising about this film is that it takes talented actors like Chris Hemsworth, Norman Reedus, Christina Applegate, Charlie Day, Michael Peña and Kaitlin Olson, and has them squeeze out a paltry handful of disposable laughs and produce a smattering of D- performances. The quality of these performances are insulting to the audience.
The frightening part of these criticisms: the acting was the best part. The writing of the film is appalling — it is absurd that someone had the gall to release a script filled mostly with pedophile jokes and a whole scene dedicated to the family bathing in human waste (a fitting metaphor for what the audience has to go through watching this film).
The script calls for actors to point out all the jokes immediately after they make them, taking away any sort of punch from the punchline. This is a puzzling decision since the film normally relies on cheap, gross humor, which doesn’t work well without the element of shock.
The writers also try to hammer in a coming-of-age story for James, as well as little foibles about family dysfunction along with Rusty and Debbie’s marriage problems. Neither of these side-stories have a place in this kind of a film, and they certainly don’t have an impact next to jokes about Hemsworth’s penis and Reedus’s character being a pedophile.
“Vacation” is a blatant cash grab that tries to piggyback off of the genuine classic that was the prequel without any sort of wit, talent or effort that made the prequel great. This movie can best be described by the experiences that the audience had watching it, whether that included guessing jokes before they happened or wondering if they wandered into “Sinister 2″ when they have to turn away from the screen in fear.
