ABOVE: Watch the trailer for Vacation.
TORONTO — Vacation is the fifth theatrical release in the National Lampoon’s Vacation series, which is based on a 1979 short story by John Hughes.
Ed Helms plays a grown-up Rusty Griswold (played by Anthony Michael Hall in the 1983 original) who decides to take his wife (Christina Applegate) and sons (Skyler Gisondo and Steele Stebbins) on a road trip for one last visit to Walley World.
Written and directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, Vacation features Chris Hemsworth, Leslie Mann and Charlie Day in small roles as well as cameos by the original Griswold couple, Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo.
Does the movie have what it takes to attract fans of the franchise and a new generation? Here’s a look at some of the reviews.
“Vacation is lazy, idiotic, and gross — and I laughed my ass off at it,” declared Bilge Ebiri at Vulture.
“A totally unnecessary sequel to a long-dormant, totally unnecessary series, this latest entry in the Griswold Saga doesn’t even try to distinguish itself.
“Like the original, Vacation has no real story to tell.”
Ebiri admitted Vacation should objectively be a bad movie. “But sometimes it’s the dumbest jokes that make you laugh the hardest, and Vacation is a gold mine of such idiocy.”
At US Weekly, Mara Reinstein said the movie offered “a few chuckles” and nostalgia fans won’t be disappointed.
READ MORE: What the critics are saying about other recent movies
Pete Hammond of Deadline opined Vacation is “all right for lovers of raunchy, ribald, go-for-broke comedy.”
He wrote: “It is a beer-chugging, cow-murdering, human-waste-bathing raucous delight that had me — and the audience I saw it with — laughing all the way.
“What ultimately makes it really work well is that despite all the mayhem it encounters and brings on itself, this family is recognizable and real. You root for them and you identify with them. I say bring it on.”
Tim Hall of Seattle PI appeared to disagree. He complained “these Griswolds don’t feel like a family.”
Hall added: “I’ll be the first to admit Vacation is not a good movie. It’s not. It barely qualifies as a movie; it’s more like a chain of unfortunate events with some reoccurring jokes and cameos sprinkled on top. Yet, Vacation still manages to entertain.”
If anything, Vacation is uneven, according to Hall.
“Parts of the film are mediocre to the least, while other scenes will make you laugh until you have tears in your eyes,” he wrote.
“Vacation has laugh out loud moments throughout, but having the patience to get there may be what stops audiences from truly enjoying it.”
Lindsey Bahr of The Associated Press summed up the movie as “an over-the-top, often hilarious homage to the original.”
But, Bahr added, “it’s also completely divorced from the reality that made the first so perfect.”
The Griswolds in Vacation are “as broadly drawn as a sitcom family” and “everything is done all-out.”
Bahr opined that Vacation is “an unabashed exercise in excess. It moves quickly, it’ll keep a smile on your face (beyond the contents of Chris Hemsworth’s underwear) and it will draw out hearty laughs along the way.”
At The Wrap, Alonso Duralde compared Vacation to an actual family holiday. “There are a few special moments you’ll remember and talk about later, but for the most part, it’s a featureless, repetitive voyage that can’t be over soon enough.”
It’s not all bad, though. Duralde admitted the movie occasionally comes to life with “the kind of ouch-inducing humour of personal humiliation and bad luck that we’ve come to know from the ongoing adventures of the Griswold family.
“But while those laughs are welcome, there aren’t quite enough of them to sustain the experience.”
Mike Smith of Moviehole said the original movie is a minute shorter “and a heck of a lot funnier.”
He wrote: “It’s not that the film isn’t ‘funny,’ it’s that it isn’t FUNNY! The situations here are mostly too wild to laugh out loud. Here’s it’s a lot of nervous giggling and hoping that the next gag will be as funny as Helms and company try to sell it.”
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