Review Roundup: Ed Helms Takes on VACATION Franchise

As part of NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VACATION series, the fifth theatrical and seventh total installment, titled VACATION, enters theaters today. VACATION was directed and written by John Francis Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein.

Hoping to bring his family closer together, Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms) takes his wife and children on a road trip across the country to Wally World, the coolest theme park in all of America. Of course, things do not go quite as expected.

VACATION stars Ed Helms, Christina Applegate, Skyler Gisondo, Steele Stebbins, Chris Hemsworth and Leslie Mann.

Let's see what the critics had to say!

Neil Genzlinger, New York Times: Strengthening of brotherly and marital bonds is the real agenda, of course, but happily the movie never stays on these laugh-killing themes long. Before an epic fight on a roller coaster wraps things up, Mr. Chase and Beverly D'Angelo have wandered through, reprising their roles as the Griswold patriarch and matriarch, grandparents who should be proud of what they have wrought.

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Maybe National Lampoon's Vacation comedies, begun in 1983, hit your sweet spot. Maybe it'll hit again with this next-generation reboot from writer-directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley. With Ed Helms as Rusty Griswold - son of Clark (Chevy Chase) and Ellen (Beverly D'Angelo) - taking his wife, Debbie (Christina Applegate), and sons, James (Skyler Gisondo) and Kevin (Steele Stebbins), down holiday road, there must be raucous R-rated fun. You'd think, but the gags about pedophiles and eating s smack of desperation. Leslie Mann and wild-card Chris Hemsworth, as her cock-flashing hubby, get the heartiest hoots. The rest is comic history warmed over.

Scott Foundas, Variety: Midway through "Vacation," the intrepid Griswold clan unwittingly takes a dip in a lake filled with human excrement, which is roughly how most viewers will feel after enduring 90-odd minutes of this miserably unfunny, mean-spirited and just plain wrong reboot of the much-loved 1980s and '90s National Lampoon comedy series. Corralling a new generation of family members for another ill-fated trek toward that theme-park mecca known as Walley World, this new "Vacation" leans heavily on franchise nostalgia - with multiple cover versions of Lindsay Buckingham's "Holiday Road" theme song and token cameos for original stars Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo - but trades the earlier films' endearing buffoonery for a cheap nastiness reminiscent of writers (and first-time directors) Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley's "Horrible Bosses." A trip to the corner store with this cast of characters would be an endurance test - which, with any luck, is as far as the movie's box office returns will carry it.

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: "Vacation" tries again and again to up the ante from its classic predecessor before calling in Chase and Beverly D'Angelo and even the original Truckster station wagon for brief appearances. But for all the F-bombs and references to "rim jobs" and "glory holes," the geniuses behind the new film just don't understand the difference between genuine subversiveness and pointless vulgarity.

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: After a while, "Vacation" starts to reek like a car when the kids have their shoes off. Really, though, that stench is a studio digging through its old titles, trying to find something fresh to remake.

Jordan Hoffman, The Guardian: But the sad thing is that this movie isn't funny or transgressive enough to cause any tumult. Our nostalgia-industrial complex has merely swallowed up another intellectual property. Not that the Vacation series hadn't already been mined for sequels, but it was perhaps best to let it rest. The original wasn't exactly a masterpiece, but it did have a smidge of cultural resonance. Here was Chevy Chase, representative of that first season of Saturday Night Live, one of the final bursts of legitimate late-1960s rebellion. To see Chase segue into a grinning stooge of a father was - without overthinking it - commentary on Reaganism and yuppiedom. Helms, a funny performer, is just the face of a mining expedition for easy yuks out of a recognised title. What that says about our regurgitative culture is rather depressing. There's so much nostalgia on our screens right now. I could really use a vacation.

Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly: The new Vacation isn't bad in the same way Poltergeist was earlier this year. But if the studios insist on plundering their Reagan-era vaults for "new" ideas, they should aim higher.

Stephen Farber, Hollywood Reporter: Probably everyone has had the discomfiting experience of sitting stone-faced at a comedy while others in the theater are whooping with laughter. And so it was for me at Vacation, the gross follow-up to the Chevy Chase comedy from 1983, National Lampoon's Vacation, a smash hit that launched a franchise. Judging from the laughter around me, this new movie should be popular, though it remains to be seen whether the hard-R rating will hurt business for what is essentially a family comedy.

Stephanie Merry, The Washington Post: Writer-directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein seem to think that the "angry"-sounding Korean language is inherently funny. It's not. Neither are the film's jokes about rape, pedophilia and suicide, nor the cameo by Chevy Chase, who starred in the original film, but who hasn't been funny in ages. Pushing the envelope is great, but only when some intelligent thought goes into the nudging.

Jesse Hassenger, A.V. Club: It wouldn't be impossible, then, to match or even improve upon the 1983 Vacation. Yet the 2015 model still can't manage it, in large part because whenever Daley and Goldstein have the opportunity to make any biting observations or mount sustained original gags, they floor it in the opposite direction. The original film at least contrasted Reagan-era dysfunction with one father's picturesque and often-ridiculous ideal of an all-American road trip. The new one hints at modern complications, with Debbie's miserably dutiful social-media experience and James' very millennial sensitivity, but otherwise ignores its own set-ups.

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