Fantastic!

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

First and foremost I must just say that there is something timeless about this comedy, and even when watched today the movie stands on its own and holds its ground.It is a mixture of many different things that come together and make "National Lampoon's Vacation" work out so nicely, such as the directing by Harold Ramis, the acting by the entire cast, and the entire storyline of course.The storyline is loaded with hilarious scenes and comedy, and it works out so nicely especially because the cast are so perfectly cast for the roles, and they each bring something very unique to the story. Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo truly immortalized Clark and Ellen Griswold with their performances here in what was the start of a franchise of funny movies. It was also nice to have Randy Quaid as cousin Eddie here, especially knowing what a glorious return he will make in the "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" later on.There is a good amount of laughs to be had throughout the course of the movie, both from the blunt and in-your-face comedy, but definitely also from the more subtle jokes there is."National Lampoon's Vacation" is the type of comedy that you can watch again and again.

National Lampoon's Vacation is directed by Harold Ramis. It sees the Griswold family go on a family vacation to a water-park in California via a cross country road trip. Vacation is a fairly benign road movie. Whilst it doesn't offer anything fresh or original, what the film manages to do instead is maintain a good consistent level of humour throughout. Most of the comedy comes from Chevy Chase as the slightly naive father Clark, who gets all the best moments and punchlines.The best part of the film is the chemistry between the family. They all feel like they're genuinely part of a family. This is especially the case with Beverly D'Angelo who plays the mother Ellen, she brings a good amount of warmth and levity to the film as chaos is encompassing the family.The first half of the film is definitely the strongest part. As the film got further into it's run-time, it began to lose my attention. The film starts to drift midway through and becomes overly nonsensical. As the film entered into its final act, the slapstick humour became intolerable for me as it felt tonally inconsistent with the first half, which was somewhat over the top but still grounded in reality. In the end Vacation is a harmless comedy that has genuine moments of good humour, but gets bogged down in it's final act and becomes dull and slightly forgettable.

A little camp and very dated granted, but National Lampoons Vacation is still a proper cheer me up and let go of life family film. Clark Griswold personifies the every man American, we've all got a little Clark Griswold in us regardless of how much you try and deny it. This guy is a family man through and through, a guy that only wants the best for his wife and two kids, but one day it suddenly hits him, that his kids are growing up and getting older, and he feels he's missed out on a large proportion of their childhood putting in the hours at work.Never fear, good old Clark has a trick up his sleeves, he's hired a station wagon and plans to take the whole family on a road trip across America, their final destination, Wally World of course!Now, as you can expect, the trip of a lifetime doesn't go all to plan and there's enough hiccups along the way to keep you laughing throughout the duration of the film.One such hiccup is the diversion they take to visit Cousin Eddie and his family, the kids, all of whom have a screw loose, and the ditsy wife who has very little in the way of brain power; but that's just the start, they pick up a piece of luggage in the way of Aunt Edna, and the legendary Imogene Coca provides some comedy gold.Not withstanding, yes the family (minus one casualty) do make it to Wally World in the end, tired, beat up and an absolute mess that is, but the film is based around the journey, not the destination. Chevy Chase, during the early eighties around the time the film was released, was one of the most sought after comedy players in Hollywood, he demonstrates why perfectly with his performance in Vacation. I felt that the film revolved around Clark (Chevy Chase), and the rest of the cast was there to back him up and have something for him to interact with. One example was the famous girl in the red Ferrari scene, with just tacky music playing in the background, and no dialogue exchanged in the scene at all, this scene perfectly demonstrates Chevy's comedy prowess, his facial expressions say it all, an attractive young lady in an attractive car lures him on and Clark (as expected) bites, speeding up the car to keep up with the girl until Ellen, his wife, stops him. Very eighties, very-very eighties, a film like this couldn't have been made this successfully in any other era, as demonstrated by the recent rehash of Vacation, starring Ed Helms; that new film changed it's style to fit with the modern era, whilst staying true to the original Vacation, yet in my humble opinion, the new film had absolutely nothing on the original, dated yet timeless, a film that no matter how much you've watched, it's still good to watch again and again. Top marks I really couldn't mark it any lower I'm afraid.

Somehow this film is considered a comedy classic and Chevy Chase a comedy legend but I don't see it. From the idiotic premise of an idiot bringing his idiotic family on an idiotic journey to what I'll assume is an idiotic theme park. The journey involves doing idiotic things and meeting more idiotic family members. None of them funny or even remotely close to being funny. How this spawned a bunch of sequels and what is basically a remake is beyond me. I won't give this film an excuse of it might have been good back then because airplane and blazing saddles are older and funnier, watch them instead. Featured on Episode 68 of The Emerald Reprobates Podcast.