Welcome to this week’s edition of the Nerd Review!  Every week the Nerds give you their take on a different movie from the Nerd-o-sphere.  This week, Patrick and Dave the 2015’s Vacation a spiritual sequel to the Chevy Chase classic.

The Flick:  Vacation (2015)

What’s it About: Like his father before him Rusty Griswold takes his family on a road trip to Wally World.  Like his father before him, nothing goes according to plan.

Metacritic Score: 34

The Nerds’ Take on Vacation:

Patrick:  Sometimes, a movie comes along that just demands to be reviewed by the Nerds.  Other times, nothing compelling is coming out and no classic movies came up on the last episode of Bandwagon Nerds so we spitball an idea for the week.  And that, noble reader is how you are blessed my scathing review the 2015 Ed Helms led film Vacation, a spiritual sequel to the Chevy Chase classic.  Well, it tries anyway.  Unfortunately, this movie tries desperately to put a modern spin on the classic and fails on every level.  Buckle up, kids, because this movie is rough.

The movie follows Rusty Griswold who is now fully grown with a family of his own.  Rusty is happy with his life although his family does seem to be in a bit of a rut.  After overhearing his wife complain to a friend about their boring family vacations at a local cabin, Rusty decides to follow in the footsteps of his father Clark and drive the family across the country to Wally World: the theme park that eluded his father some thirty years prior.  Rusty hopes the family road trip will rekindle the romance with his wife and bring his two sons closer together.  Of course, just like his father Clark, nothing goes according to plan.

I’m going to start with the good I did find here.  Both of the instances of good I found.  First, Steele Stebbins as Kevin Griswold, the younger of the two Griswold siblings.  For most of the movie he bullies his older brother James, played by Skyler Gisondo.  The twist on the sibling rivalry dynamic has its moments and Stebbins really steals the show with his foul mouth and shenanigans.  The second is the cameos of Clark and Ellen Griswold themselves, Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo,  They are the familiar blanket that briefly made me forget I was watching a horrible, horrible movie.  Seriously, those two gave me fifteen minutes of what was as Clark and Ellen happily welcome their son and his family into their bed and breakfast.

So why did I hate this movie?  Well, for one thing I didn’t find it funny so much as annoying, crude and often disturbing.  Ed Helms’ Rusty is supposed to be awkward in a somewhat charming way, yet I found him to be whiny and annoying.  Helms seemed to be trying so hard to emulate Chevy Chase that he lost any semblance of what made Chase’s Clark Griswold endearing.  I really wish Helms would have been a little bit more like his awkward, neurotic dentist character Stu from The Hangover instead of doing a poor Clark impersonation.

Then there are the mishaps that happen along the road trip itself.  When we reviewed the original Vacation, I remember explaining that one of the things I loved about the movie was that the problems the Griswolds were experiencing were very much events the audience could empathize with.  Problems like getting lost, a car breaking down, and being sucked into tourist traps.  The problem with this spiritual sequel is that the mishaps seem to always turn completely sick and not with any level of subtlety.  The secret “hot spring” the family swims in?  Raw sewage.  Hey let’s channel the scene from the original where Rusty makes eyes with a beautiful woman in a car just like his dad!  But wouldn’t it be hilarious if the beautiful woman is obliterated by a semi? Hilarious stuff!  Every mishap just seems to take things too far.  But in the end, my biggest problem is just that the end.  In every vacation movie things get far out of hand, but Clark always gets his moment in the end.  Rusty doesn’t even get that as when his family finally makes it to the ride they’ve waited hours to ride, it breaks down and they never ride it!.  Clark got arrested in the original, but he got to ride the stinking ride.

Ultimately, for me this was a movie that tried way too hard.  The cast, directors, writers all really wanted to pay homage to the original Vacation, yet put a fresh stamp on it for a new audience.  Helly, they even make an awkward joke about their intent early in the film.  Unfortunately its too gross, and not funny to the point of killing the brief moments of good.  No number of cameos was going to save this film, nor are the poorly done homages or sad gross out jokes.  2015’s Vacation got it all wrong for me.  Thank goodness the new Venom movie comes out this weekend, I have a feeling I will enjoy that review.  2015’s Vacation: avoid it all costs.  I hated this movie more than Rise of Skywalker.

Patrick’s Rating:  1.08/5.0

Dave:  For the longest time, I thought the 2015 version of Vacation was a remake of the 1983 classic, a movie that scored very highly on a prior edition of The Nerds Review. This movie was on the other night and I was surprised to discover that, in reality, it was a direct sequel to the last movie in the Vacation series, namely 1997’s Vegas Vacation (yes, we are going to pretend that Christmas Vacation 2 does not exist). I also discovered that while the 2015 version cannot come close to the greatness of the original, it is a rather funny movie in its own right. I already know Patrick O’Dowd hates this movie. Don’t listen to him.

Some 18 years after his incredible run as Nick Papagorgio on the Vegas Strip, Rusty Grisswold has settled into life as an airline pilot for Econo-Air. He is married to Debbie and they have two sons. James is 14-years old and is a sweet and charming young man, albeit a bit too preoccupied with his more sensitive side. Then there is Kevin, their 12-year-old who is equal parts Biff Tannen and Jeffrey Dahmer as he bullies his older brother relentlessly and demonstrates some skill, and homicidal tendencies, anytime he is near a plastic bag. Rusty overhears Debbie complaining about how they go to the same cabin for family vacation every year so Rusty gets the enlightened, and crazy, idea to take his family on virtually the same cross-country trip to Wally World that his father, Clark, did more than 30 years earlier. You can only guess where things go from here and if you said straight off the rails, you would be right. There is a visit to Debbie’s alma matter where we learn a great deal about what she was like as a college student. There is also a visit to a Hot Springs that becomes pretty crappy in the proverbial sense of the word. The family visits Rusty’s sister Audrey and her, um, well-endowed husband Stone. There are attempts by Rusty and Debbie to have sex at the Four Corners Monument. Meanwhile, James keeps coming into contact with a girl named Adena, and that takes on a life of its own. Similar to the original, the family runs into all sorts of problems that tests their mettle and their commitment to each other. We even get a cameo from Clark & Ellen Griswold, who are running a B&B in San Francisco, and an even better cameo from the old Family Truckster.

The movie is actually more American Pie than it is Vacation. There is an enormous amount of immature and adolescent humor here. Unlike the original though, it is too much in your face too often. Some of it is just too much, such as Stone showing off his “package” to Rusty and Debbie. Some of it is too cliché, such as the visit to Grisswold Springs, which ends up being anything but a natural Hot Springs. But there are other moments that are genuinely funny and catch you by surprise that you cannot help but laugh. The “go to sleep” scene is somewhat disturbing. But it catches you so off-guard that you can’t help but laugh heartily at it. There is dialogue that takes on a life of its own, such as Rusty explaining to James what a rim-job is, and getting it completely wrong in the process. There is the awkward, but funny, interchange between Rusty and his wife after he discovers that her name in college was Debbie Do Anything. And there is the great advice from Clark to Rusty that gets this train wreck of a vacation back on track, in true Grisswold fashion. I find myself in a place where I liked, or even loved, parts of the movie as much as the parts that I just did not like.

One area where the movie shines tough is the cast. It is magnificent. Ed Helms plays Rusty, although he reminds me more of Clark Grisswold than Rusty Grisswold. Christina Applegate is very good as Debbie Grisswold. Chris Hemsworth, better known as Thor, is really good at portraying a Texan cowboy/ weatherman. Leslie Mann is solid in the brief time we see her as Audrey. And then there are the cameos, which are awesome. This includes Chevy Chase as Clark Grisswold, Beverly D’Angelo as Ellen Grisswold, Charlie Day as a suicidal river guide, Ron Livingston as a douchebag rival airline pilot, Norman Reedus as a trucker who is not what he seems (or is he?), and a whole slew of cool cameos by cops from four different states at the Four Corners Monument. I have not read Patrick’s review yet, but I certainly hope he at least gives high marks to the cast who clearly did the very best they could with the material they were given.

Now, I will not try and fool you into believing this movie is anywhere close to any of the prior Vacation installments because, quite frankly, it’s not. But there is enough here that I found genuinely funny that if you are a fan of the Vacation series in general, this is definitely worth checking out. It is not for everyone though and if you are easily offended, or even easily nauseated, you might want to skip this one. But if you have seen some or all of the previous movies, this one is worth 90 minutes of your time.

Dave’s Rating:  3.0/5.0

Overall Nerds’ Rating for Vacation (2015): 2.04/5.0