Vacation

Does the world really need another Vacation movie? Apparently, Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, the writing-directing team of the latest film in the franchise, aren’t too sure. Their own apathy about the project, and their own disdain for just about every character in the movie, saps the energy out of this lackluster comedy. It’s the worst kind of dude-bro humor, operating at about a grade-7-level. Is there anything more tiresome than a gag in which commercial pilot Rusty Griswold (son of Clark), played by Ed Helms, accidentally gropes the breasts of a passenger on his plane when he’s taken off balance by some turbulence at the hands of his senile co-pilot? If that wasn’t bad enough, Rusty falls face forward into the crotch of the woman’s young son. More turbulence. This is in the opening five minutes, and it’s a grim warning of the deadening unfunniness to come.

More disturbing, however, is the thread of creepy pedophilia jokes that runs through the movie. The crotch scene is the first of a running tally, and I’m not exactly sure for whom these jokes were intended to be funny. When I was a kid, all my parents had to shield me from was sex and violence between adults. Now, when the kiddos inevitably tune into the 2015 Vacation, someone will have to explain to them what a pedophile is, because Rusty tries to explain the word to his own son, before Mom steps in and silences her bumbling husband. 

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy dirty humor when it's done right. It’s just that this particular brand of dirty humor, not to mention the uninspired way the filmmakers push it on us, doesn’t work. It’s not clever, it’s not funny, it’s not even good enough for European Vacation, which everyone agreed was the worst Vacation movie, although there may be a contender against that title now. 

Early in the film, when Rusty informs his wife Debbie (Christina Applegate, who was just about the only performer I truly liked and engaged with in this movie) and his two sons, James (Skyler Gisondo) and Kevin (Steele Stebbins) that they’re going to drive across the country to Wally World (the same ill-fated trek his father made in the 1983 Vacation), the movie takes a self-referential turn. “It’ll be just like the original vacation!” their father declares, adopting that same wide-eyed glee that Chevy Chase got in his eyes when he was more into his plans than the rest of his family. “I’ve never heard of the original vacation,” replies Kevin, a real demon-child who’s constantly beating up on his passive older brother. “This one’s exactly the same, except the first one had a boy and a girl, and we have two boys.” I wasn’t sure exactly how to take this scene, except it felt like an accidental admission that nobody knows what to do to make this movie good. Simply being tied to a beloved comedy franchise is presumably enough to ride on for 100 minutes. (I must admit, I grew up watching Vacation and Christmas Vacation as a child, and I loved them both for quite a long time. And anyone who loves those movies will at least be happy to hear the cheesy Lindsey Buckingham tune "Holiday Road" wash over the opening credits, which feature lots of stupid family road trip photos.)

The scenes with Leslie Mann (as Rusty’s sister Audrey) and her husband Stone (Chris Hemsworth, who’s the epitome of the conservative Texan, and who parades his considerable package in front of his brother- and sister-in-law) are kind of funny. But Goldstein and Daley don’t know how to use Leslie Mann, who is one of the funniest actresses working in comedy movies right now. Both Mann and Chris Hemsworth, who’s incredibly likable and go-along, deserved more screen time. They hold our attention far more than Ed Helms, who's not nearly as charismatic. 

And of course, no Vacation would be complete without an appearance from Clark and Ellen Griswold (Chevy Chase and the wonderful Beverly D’Angelo, who was often the saving grace of the other movies in the franchise.) Some readers may not know this because so many crappy comedies are written by men who don’t know what to do with brilliantly talented actresses, but Beverly D’Angelo can sing. Yes. She once played Patsy Cline in Coal Miners Daughter. She has a beautiful singing voice and terrific comic timing to boot, which makes her virtually silent role in this movie all the more disheartening. 

Christina Applegate takes over for Beverly D'Angelo as a reason not to completely hate these movies. She's a trooper, and the movie tries to give her character a crazy side which unfortunately ends up backfiring because it unleashes the movie's misguided contempt for her. Rusty, despite Debbie’s wishes, makes a detour at her old university, where she gets sucked into a sorority drinking game that involves downing a pitcher of beer and then completing an obstacle course. Applegate vomits repeatedly before being pummeled and thrown to the ground, where she lays face-down in her own frothy upchuck. Such dignity. 

As for the kids, I wanted to squash the little brother Kevin. Skyler Gisondo is sort of likable as James, the budding writer who would rather wander the West like Jack Kerouac than go to a “corporate theme park.” There's not much complexity to either one of these boys: the older brother is totally likable and the younger brother is a monstrous little shit. When James finally does put an end to Kevin's abuse, it's underwhelming, although admittedly in character, to see him lightly slap his brother, who's disturbed by the weirdness of it. James's method works, though. And moreover, the movie hates him just as much as his little brother. But it's more proof that the makers of Vacation secretly despise their own characters. You'll be glad when the journey is over. 

Addendum: The car--a lime-green "Tartan Prancer" with a remote control that offers terrifying choices-- is pretty hysterical. 

Orange County

Orange County (2002) isn't offensive, exactly, but it isn't a very good movie, either. It's about an aspiring writer named Shaun (Colin Hanks), who's convinced that he needs to go to Stanford and study with a writer he's stuck on. The movie is about the various misadventures that take place in one 24-hour period during which Shaun tries to get accepted, after the dippy college counselor at his high school (Lily Tomlin in a bit role) sends in the wrong transcript and he gets rejected. That's an interesting idea, but the writer of Orange County, Mike White (who plays a small role as Shaun's English teacher), is running on empty from the very beginning.

The earnest performance of Colin Hanks (son of Tom Hanks) is one of this movie's strongest attributes, yet the writing is so undeveloped that you never really buy his whole aspiring-literary-talent thing. He's a nice guy. That's about all we get.  We see him transform from stoned surfer to would-be Ernest Hemingway, but there's no real impetus for his transformation, other than the sudden death of one of his surfing buddies, an obvious plot device. And if you're paying any attention at all to the movie, you'll see how many of these plot devices White relies on in his script. For example, Shaun's brother, Lance (played by Jack Black), is a ne'er-do-well junkie who's mooching off his family, and it's his stupid behavior that bungles a meeting between Shaun and an influential Stanford board member. Later, it's Lance who sets up an astoundingly contrived chain of events that gets Shaun into the school.

This movie doesn't know how to show its feelings, such as disappointment, frustration, grief, or joy, and so it turns to catchy pop songs to convey its emotions by proxy. Is it any wonder that a movie produced by a music conglomerate like MTV fails in its grasp for authenticity? You start to think they just made it so they could sell the soundtrack. Perhaps the audience saw through this: Orange County wasn't exactly a hit.

There's a slew of talent associated with the film, but don't expect much when the material is this sloppy. Director Jake Kasdan (who helmed last year's abysmal Bad Teacher) has a sitcom-level mentality, and he doesn't know how to work with the actors. They're all emotionally maxed-out characters at the beginning, and so there's nowhere for them to go emotionally. They fizzle. Catherine O'Hara has a few good moments as Shaun's drunk mother, but even she isn't allowed to reach her wonderfully loony potential. (She does some similar (but better) work in an episode of HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm.) Kevin Kline puts in a brief spot as the idolized writer, whose appearance marks the film's climax, but he's reduced to the role of the "wise artiste," providing Shaun (and the movie) with some tripe about writing. When you see a performer like Kevin Kline playing such a boring role, it gives you little hope for the future of comedy in movies. Also present are John Lithgow as Shaun's dad, Chevy Chase as the high school principal, Brett Harrison and Kyle Howard as Shaun's perpetually stoned surfer buddies, and Schuyler Fisk (daughter of Sissy Spacek) as Shaun's good-natured girlfriend, the only sane person in his life. And Jack Black, who is an often dizzying force of energy, is all over the place with his mugging. (There are too many stoners in this movie for any of them to stand out, for one thing.) He needs a good director to channel his crazed brilliance. Without that, he's utterly unfunny. 

The really ironic thing is that Orange County presents the adults as complete morons: the guidance counselor's gaffe generates the entire meandering plot, the parents are miserable, clinging people. They're divorced from each other and both in unhappy, unsuccessful re-marriages (for all the wrong reasons). The teachers are either stupid or disingenuous (or both). And yet, we're expected to believe that Shaun turned into a sophisticated, responsible young man amidst all this incompetency. And to top it off [SPOILER ALERT], the movie has the nerve to go Frank Capra on us at the end: Mom and Dad get back together, Son gets into Stanford via their generous financial donation to the school, he decides that home really is where the heart is, and we're all happily-ever-after-together. [END OF SPOILERS.] It's amazing that such an essentially square movie could come from the people at MTV, who seem so convinced that they are the purveyors of what's hip. Perhaps they're turning over a new leaf. They've learned that banality is safer than originality. Oh wait, that's not a new concept to them at all.

With Harold Ramis as the dean of admissions, Garry Marshall, Dana Ivey, Jane Adams, and Ben Stiller in an undistinguished cameo appearance as a firefighter.

Foul Play

For most of my childhood, Foul Play (1978) was my favorite comedy (or at the very least, tied with Nine to Five--which, incidentally, was directed by the same man, Colin Higgins). It's about a shy but sexy librarian (Goldie Hawn) who becomes mixed up in a murder plot involving an odd assortment of criminals who are planning to assassinate the pope when he visits San Francisco. The movie is basically a remake of Charade, where Audrey Hepburn plays the chic widow pursued by a trio of cads in Paris and a mysterious stranger, played by Cary Grant. It evens mimics Charade in at least one scene where Goldie is running from one of her attackers. The camera zooms in on her legs and her black high heels as she runs for her life.

Goldie Hawn seems to have access to a neverending current of charm, and she's consistently engaging in almost every movie I've seen her in. While Foul Play may be one of the fluffier entries into her career, it's nonetheless a fun movie, provided you don't put too much thought into it. The comedy is best when Goldie is resourceful but wide-eyed, and her co-star, Chevy Chase, doesn't have to fake Cary Grant-ish charm. Chevy's strength is in his bumbling inability to be serious, and as long as he doesn't have to be a legitimate romantic lead, you can enjoy his being ostensibly paired off with Hawn. He plays a cop who Goldie meets at a party, and then becomes involved with her after responding to her frantic call to the police during an attack by a creepy thug (Don Calfa).

Several comic set pieces are utterly contrived. A scene with Billy Barty is a complete waste, manufactured by the confusion of the head criminal's nickname, "The Dwarf." There's a whole sequence involving Dudley Moore that doesn't fit into the movie at all. Moore is funny regardless, playing a kinky swinger who gets the wrong idea when Goldie asks him to take her home. She's running from a killer, but somehow convinces Moore that she's looking for a one-night-stand.

Hawn's character seems anachronistic to San Francisco. She's apparently the first modern American woman to be de-liberated by a divorce: it's turned her into a mousy loner who has shut herself off to the prospect of romance. It's hard to accept, because Goldie Hawn exudes an effulgent likableness that is anything but shy or unappealing.

And San Francisco isn't exactly portrayed in a good light: it's shown as a city of psychos and sex perverts. Another movie from 1978, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, turns the Bay city into a haven for an alien invasion where humans are being harvested. Granted, this was the city of the Zodiac killer, so perhaps there was good reason to paint it as a locus of dangerous activity. In the process, however, the filmmakers lose a lot of the capital they could have gotten out of their setting. The city's cultural opulence is dulled, with the exception of a sequence in a retrospective movie house and the denouement, which occurs during a performance of The Mikado (both sequences turn their settings into places of destruction). It's as if art itself is merely a breeding ground for violent criminal behavior. Or maybe it exacerbates the behavior.

The whole assassination plot is a bit half-cocked, but you don't go to this kind of movie for brilliant storytelling. The sequence where Goldie and Chevy race across San Francisco, wrecking several cars in the process, is a clunky way to liven things up. Burgess Meredith offers liveliness of a natural kind. He plays Hawn's landlord, a kindly retired anthropologist with a Black Belt in Karate that comes in handy during a scuffle with the radiantly evil-looking Rachel Roberts.

With Eugene Roche, Brian Dennehy, and Marilyn Sokol. 

Fletch

In Fletch (1985), Chevy Chase gives his best comic performance. His brand of humor was never put to better use than as the wise-cracking investigative reporter Irwin M. Fletcher. Set in L.A., the movie is based on Gregory McDonald's 1974 mystery novel of the same name. While I haven't read the book, just skimming a summary of its plot makes me wonder if screenwriter Andrew Bergman oversimplified the story, weakening it in the process. The two separate mysteries are woven together with clumsy indiscretion. What could have been a fine, richly layered and exciting comic-mystery is rendered something less: it's a superficial and transparent middle-finger-valentine. Fletch is nevertheless an entertaining lightweight comedy. You find yourself enjoying it with ease, and the flaws are somehow mitigated by Chase's mugging and the movie's laid-back tone. Harold Faltermeyer's music score adds a wonderful campiness to the production. The cast is quite a good one, but their characters are never fleshed out. Everyone takes a back seat to Fletch. Followed by Fletch Lives in 1989. Directed by Michael Ritchie. With Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, Richard Libertini, Joe Don Baker, Tim Matheson, and Geena Davis.

Hot Tub Time Machine

As someone with a fondness for all things 80s, the premise of Hot Tub Time Machine appealed to me: three middle-aged losers (John Cusack, Craig Robinson, Rob Corddry), in an effort to relive their glory days, take off to a ski resort they visited in 1986. Time has not been kind to them or the resort, which is now a dilapidated relic bearing only a faint reminder of happier, more irresponsible days a quarter of a century earlier. Then something strange happens with the help of a hot tub that is apparently a time portal, and the guys (along with Cusack's nerdy 20-year-old nephew) are transported back to that fateful weekend of 1986. The mirror reveals that their youthful appearances have returned (except for the nephew, who technically isn't even born yet). Okay, I laughed out loud a lot during this retro comedy, but as I think back with a more critical mindset, I'm struck by the fact that much of the movie spends its time documenting arguments where Corddry, the biggest loser of the group, makes himself look less and less credible as a human being. Cusack, who is the most recognizable face among the main characters (as well as the only one to have been acting in the 80s), is expected to carry the film but his character isn't anymore well-defined than the others. Hot Tub is typical of today's comedy: it takes refuge in its pop culture references, and forgets that having a compelling and ironic story of its own is the heart of any movie, regardless of the genre. Chevy Chase is wasted in a stupid role as  a mysterious repairman who seems to be aware of the group's time traveling woes, and talks in pseudo-Buddhist jargon (not unlike his character in Caddyshack). Crispin Glover (he played Michael J. Fox's dad in the Back to the Future movies) has one of the funniest parts, as a bellman whose arm--missing in 2010 but intact in 1986--provides a running gag. ★½