Christmas Vacation (Jeremiah S. Chechik, 1989)
Call me Scrooge if you want, but this was not funny. The best laughs are the first ones where Clark Griswold lets his road rage get the best of him on the trip to find the Griswold family Christmas tree. Past that, outside of a few nice cousin Eddie moments, I didn’t find this humor to be entertaining at all. The whole ‘everything goes wrong’ plotline gave me more anxiety than laughs. Clark Griswold’s characterization is also bad. For the first half of the film, he is more of an idiot than is even humanly possible for a man in his position. Then, during the second half those traits disappear and he’s just an average guy having a bad week. Honestly, the kids are probably the best characters in the movie. They are a nice blend of embarrassed teenager and well-raised. They don’t shun their family at every waking possibility, but they still exhibit normal irritable tendencies at times. Just a small nugget of good in an otherwise disappointing movie. 4/10





