Vacation review - finally a funny comedy

A father tries to take his family on a cross-country road trip to Walley World.

I hold no particular love for 1983s National Lampoons Vacation – mostly because I just don’t find Chevy Chase funny. Yes perhaps my brain is broken but comedy is a very subjective thing. In and that same vein, I thought Vacation was freaking hilarious.

You don’t need to know anything about the series to get on board with this new adventure, the film even goes out of its way to dismiss the previous version early on.

Instead you should sit back and enjoy a chaotic family trip as a father tries to bring his increasingly estranged family back together.

The Griswold’s have a pretty tough time on the road, going from one disaster to the next and setting up a slew of comedy set-pieces which mostly landed at least a giggle from me.

Leading man Ed Helms gives his all in every scene and his comic timing and reactions are perfect here – especially when he’s screaming nonsensically as a situation gets more and more out of control.

First time feature directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley (he’s only 30 and looks about 12) just have a great bead on how far to push a joke.

There’s a hint of the lingering awkwardness which works so well in something like The Office but there’s also plenty more going on – including gags which build over many minutes and a couple of recurring jokes which worked almost every time.

One example is the younger Griswold kid played by Steele Stebbins. He’s an asshole – emotionally abusing his gentle older sibling at every turn in ways that are lewd, crude and surprisingly nasty.

But his interludes are doled out at intervals – they’re regular enough to keep up the laughs but infrequent enough to make it still feel fairly fresh.

There’s a special joy also in getting a full on R-rated comedy, especially in a film which is mostly about family.

Curse words fly and random folks die at regular intervals in Vacation, and there’s a refreshing lack of any taboos. Still the writer/directors steer clear of an over-reliance on bodily fluids and sexual abuse jokes in favour of a wide ranging style of humour.

Maybe it’s a little drawn out, with a few too many awful incidents, and the glut of secondary characters does get a bit wearing but Vacation quite simply made me laugh from start to finish.

Maybe that’s partly because I had no expectations going in or down to the fact that it hit on a specific kind of mean-spirited humour which is on my wavelength but it works, and it’s nice to see a genuinely funny comedy for grown-ups for a change.

The film also gives me hope for the upcoming standalone Spiderman flick from the same writers, set for release in 2017.

Vacation is the funniest film I’ve seen this year and the muted critical reaction isn’t reflected in most users scores with a fairly healthy 6.2 on IMDB. Give it a go.

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