12/24-Christmas Vacation (1989)

If you've never seen a National Lampoon's Vacation movie, let me give you a quick rundown.  Clark Griswald (Chevy Chase) is basically the human form a dad joke and enjoys taking vacations with his family.  They've gone to theme parks, Europe, Las Vegas, and even space in National Lampoon's Out of this World Vacation.  That last one was obviously a joke, but the others are real movies.  In this particular one, the Griswalds don't go anywhere, but instead brings all the family to their house to celebrate Christmas.

First of all, the credits are adorable.  It's this cute little animated sequence that's essentially a Looney Toons episode starring Santa.  In other words, it's one of those anything that can go wrong does go wrong with a bunch of physical humor.  The humor of the credits is a good representation of the humor of the actual movie.  In addition, the song is an original song written for the movie, which doesn't really happen anymore and that makes me sad.  The last movie with an original song for the credits that I can think of is Rat Race, but there could be others.

Anyway, the movie opens with the Griswalds on their way into the countryside to cut down their own tree.  You also meet the main family for the first time and how all the family is recognizable.  First, the mom is played by Beverly D'Angelo, whom you may know as the pimp from Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, who kills NPH.  The daughter is Juliette Lewis, who's in so much, but I'll go with Natural Born Killers.  And finally the son is unrecognizably Leonard from The Big Bang Theory.

The car ride scene tells you everything you need to know about each of the characters should this be your first go around with the Griswalds.  First, the kids are basically just there.  They don't really want to be, but they go along with it.  There's no real character for them, other than being teenagers.  Ellen, the mom, supports Clark in all his wackiness.  And makes bad jokes and thinks he's cooler than he is.  "Burn some dust here. Eat my rubber," he says as he attempts to overtake a truck on the road.

It's hard to tell sometimes when he says stuff like that if he is joking, or is genuinely kind of a dumdum.  For example, when he picks out the tree, the son says that it wouldn't fit in their yard.  "It's not going in our yard, Rus, it's going in our living room."  Dipshit.  He didn't say that, but he may as well have with his attitude.  I mean the tree is obviously too big, but everyone indulges Clark.

He also forgot a saw, so they somehow uprooted it.

In setting up the tree, Clark explains there's a bit of sap, which leads to a nice scene of Clark trying to read a magazine in bed while his fingers get stuck to everything.  Really solid physical comedy.  We also learn from this bed scene that Clark really want to have a big family Christmas, even though Ellen is a little worried about having both sets of grandparents there.

The truth is, not a whole lot more happens in the movie.  I mean, there's more, but it wouldn't really translate well to me just talking about it.  Bullet points are the grandparents don't really get along, as alluded to by Ellen, and Randy Quaid and his wife (Ellen's sister and her podunk husband, unrespectively) show up unannounced with their two kids in their RV.

Again, most of the humor is slapstick, often at the expense of Clark, who almost never lets anything get to him, at least until his marvelously explosive diatribe in the final act.  But there's also some nice touches about family and whatnot that hits nicely.

Rating on the feel-good-o-meter: 6 out of 10 hugs