John Hughes, best known for the teen-centric movies he would write in the midst of the '80s, was a regular contributor to the humor magazine National Lampoon, and one of the stories he contributed to the magazine was called Vacation '58, inspired by the trips his family would go on when he was growing up. Updated for 1983, Vacation '58 became the screenplay for the film Vacation, a collaboration between National Lampoon and Warner Bros. (with National Lampoon even taking an above-the-title possessive, John Carpenter style).
Directed by Harold Ramis, who had previously co-written National Lampoon's Animal House (not to mention Meatballs, Caddyshack, and Stripes), the film stars Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Anthony Michael Hall, and Dana Barron as one of the most beloved families in cinema history, the Griswolds. They're far from perfect, but their antics have brought viewers a lot of joy over the decades.
The set-up is that Clark W. Griswold (Chase) wants to take his family on vacation from Chicago to the Walley World amusement park out in California, a place clearly inspired by Disneyland. Instead of Mickey Mouse, the mascot is Marty Moose. While kids Rusty (Hall) and Audrey (Barron) would rather go to Hawaii, and they would both rather fly to their destination, as would Clark's wife Ellen (D'Angelo), Clark is determined to make this a road trip so the family can spend as much time together as possible. So they embark on a road trip in the hideous, metallic pea "Family Truckster", a journey that's the sort of thing you might look back on and laugh down the line, but it's quite hellish to endure in the moment.
Hughes and Ramis put the Griswolds through the wringer, and a lot of the unpleasant things they experience are things viewers can probably relate to. The smell of stinky feet coming from the backseat. Taking the wrong exit. A drive through a dangerous neighborhood. The struggle to stay awake. The boredom of spending so many hours in a car. Stays in sketchy, rundown lodging. Car trouble. Odd roadside attractions. Lost luggage. And they also have to deal with some things that are very specific to the Griswold family, like a visit with Ellen's trashy cousin Eddie (Randy Quaid), his sweet wife Catherine (Miriam Flynn), and their many children, including teens Vicki (Jane Krakowski) and Dale (John P. Navin Jr.). Eddie clearly has a questionable approach to parenting, and his kids are a bit of a bad influence on Audrey and Rusty during their brief time together.
Another family member who enters the picture at Eddie and Catherine's is elderly Aunt Edna (Imogene Coca), a nightmare of an old lady who has a wild dog called Dinky. And the family springs it on Clark and Ellen that they have to give Edna and Dinky a ride from Kansas to Phoenix, Arizona on their way to California. The stretch of the trip that involves Edna and Dinky is the most disastrous... but things don't go well when the Griswolds reach California, either.
In addition to the actors and characters already mentioned, the Griswolds also have memorable encounters with the likes of John Candy, Frank McRae, Brian Doyle-Murray, James Keach, Eugene Levy, Mickey Jones, John Diehl, and Eddie Bracken as Roy Walley, owner of Walley World.
We've probably all heard the stories about Chevy Chase having a bad attitude, but his real life disposition didn't keep him from bringing us some incredible comedic performances over the years, and he brings Clark to life in such an appealingly goofy-but-good-intentioned way that he made a lot of people love this character despite the fact that he is often a jerk. It's cool that he wants to take his family on this vacation and he's determined to stick with it no matter what the world throws at them, but he goes too far at times (like what happens with Aunt Edna), and he has a serious case of the wandering eye. Ellen is a loving, committed wife, and she and Clark clearly have an active sex life, but it's not enough for Clark, who has a tendency to lust for other women in an over-the-top way. Here it's a blonde played by Christie Brinkley, who Clark sees on the road a couple times, and then meets face-to-face during a hotel stay. Things get very inappropriate with that woman. The film doesn't take Clark beyond the point of redemption, but it takes him right up to that line. But that has never seemed to have much of an effect on his popularity with audiences. And even though I shake my head at Clark's antics, I'm a fan of the guy too.
Vacation is one of those go-to comedies that has been part of my life for as long as I remember. It reached theatres about four months before I was born, so by the time I was aware of what was on television, this movie was on a lot. I always loved it and watched it again and again throughout my childhood, along with its sequels. I was raised on the Griswolds. So it's kind of like they're part of my own family; I see their flaws, but I love them anyway. It helps that they're at the center of some brilliant comedies.
I enjoyed Vacation when I was a little kid, but it's certainly not the sort of film that gets less entertaining as I get older. It's the opposite; I've come to appreciate its humor more and more over the years. It was aimed at people older than I was when I was first watching it, and now that I'm around the age of Clark and Ellen (my current age falls in between the ages Chase and D'Angelo were when they made the movie) the movie is even more amusing to me than it was in the '80s. This is an all-timer, a classic that I will always be going back to on a regular basis.
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