Go back to previous topic
Forum namePass The Popcorn
Topic subjectVacation (Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley, 2015)
Topic URLhttp://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=6&topic_id=697367
697367, Vacation (Jonathan Goldstein & John Francis Daley, 2015)
Posted by bwood, Thu May-07-15 11:57 AM
Red band trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScMOyURq9os

The OG was funny. This looks hilarious as well.
701033, Everyone is great in this. Sadly, 80% of the jokes don't land.
Posted by bwood, Mon Jul-27-15 02:25 PM
It's okay for what is and it's probably the best thing these two have done yet (and that's saying something).

If these two guys are writing Spider-Man, I'm worried.

But, like I said everyone is great and I'm glad it follows Rusty and his family instead of dragging Chevy through another adventure or being a reboot.

701034, What's the tone like?
Posted by handle, Mon Jul-27-15 02:44 PM
The commercials make it seem EXCEPTIONALLY CRASS.

The Christie Brinkley type in the sports car being killed by the big rig seems pretty mean.

So does Clark JR (or Rusty, or whoever Helms is) getting his arm smashed in the car door.

This seem like they'd work better as cartoon violence jokes.

(And for the record I *DO* remember that a dog was dragged to death AND a old woman was transported on the roof - those definitely we're tasteless but seemed rooted in a more "real" reality.)
701035, I'd say whimsical, mean, gross and cartoonish.
Posted by bwood, Mon Jul-27-15 02:55 PM
Most of the biggest laughs are in the trailer(s). The little kid/little brother was such a fucking asshole that most of the theater groaned whenever he opened his mouth.

Also, some jokes and scenes stretch out for too long.
701039, Variety's review is very, very accurate *swipe*
Posted by bwood, Mon Jul-27-15 03:20 PM
http://variety.com/2015/film/reviews/vacation-film-review-1201547024/

Midway through “Vacation,” the intrepid Griswold clan unwittingly takes a dip in a lake filled with human excrement, which is roughly how most viewers will feel after enduring 90-odd minutes of this miserably unfunny, mean-spirited and just plain wrong reboot of the much-loved 1980s and ’90s National Lampoon comedy series. Corralling a new generation of family members for another ill-fated trek toward that theme-park mecca known as Wally 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.” A trip to the corner store with this cast of characters would be an endurance test — which, with any luck, is as far as the movie’s box office returns will carry it.

When he penned the script for the first “Vacation” (based on his National Lampoon short story “Vacation ‘58”), the late John Hughes was riffing on his own memories of tumultuous family excursions in smoke-filled station wagons, and of a suburban middle-class America that aspired to the gleaming perfection of the families in department-store Sunday circulars. Consisting of bickering but loving teenage siblings Rusty and Audrey, impossibly patient mom Ellen, and quixotic dad Clark (whose best-laid plans inevitably curdled), the Griswolds were like a live-action Flintstones or Simpsons (avant la lettre), and the good will of the first movie carried over into three lesser but enjoyable sequels (the best of which, 1989’s “Christmas Vacation,” has since become a December perennial). But the Griswolds of the new “Vacation” really are the family from the Sunday circulars: They seem to have met each other at a casting call a few minutes before the cameras rolled, and the movie itself doesn’t seem to like them very much.

One good measure of what’s off about Goldstein and Daley’s approach comes right in the opening scene, when the now-adult Rusty (Ed Helms), a pilot for a discount commuter airline, takes an in-flight bathroom break, leaving the plane in the hands of a senile co-pilot — a gag that would feel gag-worthy even if it didn’t arrive with the Germanwings disaster still making headlines. Another indicator comes a bit later, when Goldstein and Daley give Rusty his own version of the first “Vacation’s” encounter between Clark and a Ferrari-driving babe (Christie Brinkley then, Hannah Davis now) — a scene, in the new movie, whose punchline is a violent head-on collision.

Like the summer’s other tentpole movie set inside a fictional theme park, “Vacation” shows us that it understands the burden of expectations that come with resurrecting an iconic franchise. “We’re not redoing anything. This will be completely different,” an exasperated Rusty assures his sons, pint-sized bully Kevin (Steele Stebbins) and sensitive, guitar-strumming James (Skyler Gisondo), in the course of explaining why he’s decided to retrace the very route his own parents took to Wally World once upon a time. Unpersuaded, the kids respond that they’ve “never even heard of the original vacation.” (A more direct nod to “Jurassic World” comes in the form of Wally World’s newest and most popular roller coaster: the Velociraptor.) From there, “Vacation” proceeds as a scattershot mix of homage (a temperamental minivan known as the Tartan Prancer — “the Honda of Albania” — in place of the immortal Wagon Queen Family Truckster) and the sort of self-congratulatory vulgarity that seems to have spewed forth from the (junior high) locker room instead of the writers room.

The Griswolds have endured a lot over the decades, though this “Vacation” is the first one where they’ve been road-raged by a pedophile truck driver and nearly taken over the falls by a suicidal river-rafting guide (Charlie Day). That generally depressive air is only compounded by watching so many gifted performers struggling to prop up such flaccid material (including no shortage of dick jokes, gay jokes, gender-identity jokes). The always game Christina Applegate, such a spry comedienne in the “Anchorman” pics, is utterly wasted here as Rusty’s long-suffering missus, on hand mainly to projectile-vomit her way through a round of drunken sorority games during a visit to her Memphis alma mater. Still, she escapes with slightly more dignity than does Chris Hemsworth, on hand mainly to prance about in his skivvies as the vain Texas TV weatherman who’s married Audrey (a similarly underused Leslie Mann). Least of all are Chase (looking frightfully bloated) and D’Angelo (looking radiant at 63), whose 11th-hour appearances seem tacked on as a post-production afterthought.

Key to the success of the “Vacation” movies was their underlying sweetness — the sense that, for all their foibles, the Griswolds were a surprisingly functional lot. Families looked up at the screen and saw a version of themselves reflected back. Look at the new “Vacation” and all that stares back is a great comic void.
701071, Comicbook.com's review is hysterical.
Posted by bwood, Tue Jul-28-15 12:20 PM
http://comicbook.com/2015/07/27/vacation-review-the-funniest-movie-of-2015/

My favorite bit is this: "The best part of Vacation is its relevance to today's world. Unlike Trainwreck which appeals to a niche audience, or Pixels, where the humor caters to seasoned audiences, Vacation finds itself checking all the right boxes for the today's cinema-goers.".

If he mean Trainwreck is for niche audiences I guess he means "niche audience" = "people who have had sexual experiences and deal with everyday problems"