The 1983 comedy Vacation is an enduring classic, but it's not a movie I watch every year and I can't remember my first viewing of it. It came out the year I was born and is a movie that was always there in my life for as long as I can remember, along with the sequel that followed a couple years later, European Vacation. I watched them when they aired on cable, I watched them on VHS tape, recordings of cable airings. I was quite familiar with them already when I saw a trailer for Christmas Vacation. I'm not sure what movie I was seeing in theatre when that trailer played, maybe Back to the Future Part II since it was released the month before, but I do remember seeing the trailer for Christmas Vacation on the big screen. And then at the start of December 1989, right around my sixth birthday, I was back at the theatre to see Christmas Vacation on opening weekend. Even at that age I loved the movie, and when I went to school the next Monday I proudly told my kindergarten teacher that I had gone to see it. More than thirty years later it's something I watch every year, as part of my holiday celebrations.
The Griswolds are back, headed up by Chevy Chase as Clark and Beverly D'Angelo as Ellen, but their children Rusty and Audrey have been recast again, as they are in every Vacation movie. This time the casting of the kids switched things around; while Rusty had previously been substantially taller than his sister, Audrey is now substantially taller than him. In the previous movies they seemed quite close in age, now Audrey is obviously the older sibling. They're played by Johnny Galecki and Juliette Lewis in this one and really don't feel like the Rusty and Audrey we met before... but whatever, I can go with it. That has never had any effect on my enjoyment of the movie, and Galecki and Lewis do fine work with what they were given to do.
Something that made the first Vacation so great was how relatable it was. Screenwriter John Hughes (who also wrote Christmas Vacation and is credited for co-writing European Vacation but said he didn't) was clearly drawing from personal experience when he wrote about the Griswold family's disastrous (and yet oddly triumphant) road trip. The same can be said about Christmas Vacation, as the film perfectly captures the feeling of a family Christmas celebration in the Midwest. We see the Griswolds trekking out into the snowy wilderness to cut down their own Christmas tree, something my family did a couple times when I was a kid. They put the tree up in the living room and now have to deal with having a pine tree in their house, wrapped in electric lights. The tree isn't the only thing decorated with lights, as Clark makes it his mission to turn the Griswold home into the flashiest house in the neighborhood, wrapped in 25,000 lights. When I was a kid, my father put lights all over our house as well... and he would also struggle with keeping full strands lit and have to go checking for bad bulbs, like Clark does. And it's not the coolest thing, but when Clark loses his temper and busts the hell out of a display of Santa and his reindeer because he can't figure out why this lights won't come on, that's absolutely something my father would have done. Then there's sled rides down a snowy hill and dinner with the extended family.
Christmas Vacation introduces us to Clark's kindly parents Clark Sr. and Nora, played by John Randolph and Diane Ladd, and to Ellen's more judgmental parents Art and Frances, played by E.G. Marshall and Doris Roberts. We also meet Clark's rather unpleasant uncle Lewis (William Hickey) and Lewis's senile wife Bethany (Mae Questel). All of these characters have funny moments, but the funniest family member is the returning Cousin Eddie, played by Randy Quaid in the greatest performance of his career. Eddie was amusing in Vacation, but he is hilarious in Christmas Vacation. He makes a surprise visit to the Griswolds' home in a beaten-up RV with his wife Catherine (Miriam Flynn) and kids Rocky and Ruby Sue (Cody Burger and Ellen Hamilton Latzen), different kids than the ones we saw in Vacation. They enter the picture just before the halfway point, and while the movie was great before then, it reaches a whole new level when Clark and Eddie start interacting with each other.
While there are terrific comedic performances from the supporting cast, Chase continues to be perfect in the role of Clark Griswold. The stories about him having a troublesome attitude in real life are so disappointing because Clark is so likeable, flaws and all. Sure, he's prone to angry outbursts and drools over other women - this time he has an awkward interaction with a store clerk played by Nicolette Scorsese and later fantasizes that she's stripping down by the swimming pool he wants to get - but he's always trying to do the best thing for his family and provide a good time for them. He has good intentions, he just runs into issues a lot. It doesn't help that his boss Frank Shirley (Brian Doyle-Murray, who had a different role in Vacation) has decided to eliminate Christmas bonuses this year, the money Clark was counting on so he could install that pool. But Eddie has an idea on how to fix that problem, an idea that kind of brings to mix the climactic sequence of Vacation.
Christmas Vacation is a fantastic film, packed with iconic scenes and funny lines and sight gags. It's hysterical, but also heartwarming. This was the feature directorial debut of Jeremiah Chechik and he delivered an all-time classic. I love going back to this every December and will continue to do so for as long as I can. The holiday season just isn't complete without visiting the Griswolds.
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