GRISWOLDS-GIVING: Vacation (2015)
Turns out a good story and a great cast can go a LONG way…
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CONTENT WARNING: Discussions of insensitive jokes about pedophilia, fighting between siblings, excessive drunkenness, vomiting, collegiate drinking, poor depictions of suicidal characters.
We finish up our road trip this week with the final film in our little Griswold excursion, and this time, it’s Rusty taking the family on a cross-country adventure. Automatically, though, there’s a shift for the better in this movie, which owes far more to Adam McKay, Judd Apatow, and Todd Philips than Harold Ramis or Chevy Chase. Ed Helms is even more oblivious than Clark ever was, but is also earnest and loving, and feels like a real dad. Christina Applegate gets to play the anti-Ellen Griswold, and is all the funnier being the badass mom we always wanted. And our two kids in this movie are trope-busting, profanity-stacked perfection. The movie’s got its problems, punching down too often, and milking really tough jokes for laughs when we really don’t need them to keep going. But still, it’s worth it for the closest we’ve come to a truly great Vacation film.. We review 2015’s Vacation on this week’s episode of Macintosh & Maud Haven’t Seen What?!
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Excerpt used from “Holiday Road,” written and performed by Lindsey Buckingham. Copyright 1983 Now Sounds Music (BMI). Phonographic copyright 1983 Warner Bros. Records.
Clips from the film Vacation are © 2015 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and RatPac-Dune Entertainment LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Intro music taken from the Second Movement of Ludwig von Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Hong Kong (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 HK) license. To hear the full performance or get more information, visit the song page at the Internet Archive.
Jingle bells effect taken from “Jingle bells.wav” created by user ‘juskiddink’ on the Freesound platform. Licensed under an Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) license. To get additional information or download the sound, visit Freesound.
