Vacation (2015)

When I first heard they were going to make a kind of sequel film to the 'National Lampoons Vacation' series I was excited, but when I started hearing the early buzz and reviews I was disappointed. Still I decided that I was going to see the film because my dad loved those movies so much, especially the original and Christmas Vacation. What I got was a film that split the difference between my original high hopes and my later small expectations. Vacation takes the character of Rusty from the original films (here played by Ed Helms, whose about as good an heir to Chevy Chase as you could expect) whose now grown up and decides, against all apparent logic, to take his family on a road trip to Walley World. The movie basically takes the original Vacation film as its template, only makes it less funny and more crude, not that the original movie was without crudity. Still this movie did a really good job of capturing the essence of what the original film was about, had a (mostly) good heart and a few genuinely funny moments (one of which was so unexpected it was awesome), though there were quite a few misfires as well. In short its a mediocrity with some heart, but I was expecting much worse so I kind of liked it. **