Guilty Pleasures: Vegas Vacation
By Samuel Hoelker
December 16, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
People seem to like it when a young person takes a passion in something from their own generation. “Oh, how cute,” they may say, “little Junior’s singing ‘Hey Jude’.” The cuteness factor may diminish with age, but older people still find it fascinating when younger people break out of their target demographic (it’s strange; I’ve encountered lots of older people who are really surprised that I’ve actually seen Woody Allen movies [strange, right?]). Yet I have never found anyone a generation older than I who has been happy and surprised that I’m a Chevy Chase fan. In fact, it might make them fear for the future generation even more. They’d take 100 more Biebers than one more Chevy Chase.
I think my first exposure to Chevy Chase was Snow Day. I was in elementary school and it was, in fact, a snow day. Chase was the wacky weatherman who was an embarrassment to his son (whose farting best friend grew up to be a more urban, drug-dealing version of me in The Wackness). Soon after that was when I saw National Lampoon’s Vacation for the first time. Even then I could tell how far Chase had fallen - now I only needed to put the pieces together.
The mid-'90s is considered when Chase jumped the shark – first the ill-fated Chevy Chase Show and then Vegas Vacation. Eight years after the series-reviving National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Vegas Vacation seemed too late and, well, unnecessary. It was the first Vacation film to not have the prestigious National Lampoon label (which has been used for other top-quality films like Dorm Daze, Stoned Age, and Transylmania) on it. It was the first time since 1985’s National Lampoon’s European Vacation where the Griswolds actually went somewhere on vacation, and perhaps Vegas Vacation seemed like a retread – is this really the next logical place for the Griswolds to go after Europe?
In Vegas Vacation, Chase’s Clark Griswold gets a bonus from work and decides to take his less-than-enthused family (wife Ellen [Beverly D’Angelo], son Rusty [Ethan Embry], daughter Audrey [Marisol Nichols]) to Vegas for a week. As per the Vacation series, mishaps occur – they run into Ellen’s Cousin Eddie (a not-yet-crazy Randy Quaid), who is literally an embodiment of bad taste and bad luck, Clark and underage Rusty develop gambling problems, entertainer Wayne Newton falls in love with Ellen, and Audrey starts to get into the world of exotic dancing. How will this torn-apart family come back together? Spoiler alert: it’s with the help of Sid Caesar.
Although the ages of the Griswold children fluctuate (different actors in each movie), the general template of the Vacation movies does not. Clark will say things that come out wrong or offend someone. Ellen will be supportive until it becomes too much and she has to eat spaghetti at Wayne Newton’s house. The children will feel stifled and attempt to leave their parents, who emphasize “family first” more than Michael Bluth in an episode of Arrested Development. This formula has worked for three movies (or two, if you agree with everyone else in the world who’s not me that European Vacation is not good), so why change now?
What’s nice to see in Vegas Vacation is that the stakes are surprisingly high (no pun intended, actually). Sure, Ellen gets upset at Clark for his usual haplessness and extra-marital flirtations, but instead of taking an afternoon off from him or being kidnapped by a Frenchman, she actually contemplates an affair, even to the point of divorce. Rusty’s gambling prowess changes his life, bringing him great success but also putting him in mortal danger from both the law and the casino. Clark, oblivious until too late as always, ends up uprooting Cousin Eddie’s entire nest-egg to try to win back the money he gambled away. Throughout most of the movie, two families are basically destroyed. If that’s not high stakes, I don’t know what is.
The Vacation franchise has been creeping down in the ratings (from an R for the first one to a PG for this one), and its tame rating actually works for a movie about Sin City. Clark describes Vegas as a family-friendly destination, and while what they end up doing there may not be (gambling, cheating, exotically dancing), the film is successful nonetheless. Instead of gratuitous nipple shots at strip show (and the first two Vacation films did love their brief breast shots) or a long profanity-fueled tirade from Clark, Vegas Vacation shows Vegas as it would look, well, through the lens of a family vacation. I highly doubt that Vegas Vacation was made to be a conceptual art piece, but if it were, it would succeed as one. Since it’s not one , though, does that make it even more of a conceptual art success? Or should I have gone to be a business major instead?
I can’t really say that everyone’s wrong about Vegas Vacation because I think it’s really funny. Clark’s mishaps are funnier than most of his past ones (the Hoover Dam sequence could totally kick knocking down Stonehenge’s ass), the kids aren’t played as assholes (I was really glad when Audrey’s boyfriend dumped her in European Vacation) and have smooth, charming chemistry, and the celebrity guests are inspired and not really tacked-on (well, maybe Siegfried and Roy, but at least it’s not as unnecessary as recent-day Simpsons guest stars). If you don’t find Vegas Vacation funny, that’s upsetting but acceptable. It’s got all of the trademark lines and actions of the Vacation series and shouldn’t be seen as something incredibly subpar.
Like usual, Randy Quaid often steals the show with his sad-sack, hilarious poverty (instead of using a grill, he throws his meat onto the blistering rocks of the Nevada desert). His high-energy performance almost is enough to want the Vacation series to be a never-ending, Saw-style franchise. Thankfully, it’s not (although I think another full-length, theatrically-released Vacation film could work now – the Griswolds take their grandchildren somewhere?), even though it’s not as if Quaid would be willing to do anything that’s not him going crazy now anyway.
Vegas Vacation is a funny film. It’s well-made. It’s one of the better Vacation films. Feel free to not agree, but look deeper before you hate.
I’m proud to love Vegas Vacation.