Hello, welcome back to the theater!
For this installment, I'll be looking at the Christmas comedy classic 'National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.' Made in 1989, it was directed by Jeremiah S. Chechik, written by the late John Hughes (Based on a short story he wrote for National Lampoon Magazine), it stars Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Doris Roberts, Randy Quaid, and others.
Family man Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) is determined to give his wife Ellen (Beverly D'Angelo) and kids the best "Good old- fashioned family Christmas" ever. His family is skeptical, seeing as how his ambitious plans for the family tend to not work out well, but they decide to go along with it. As both sets of grandparents and other relatives arrive, though, things start to go wrong in a hurry. Slovenly Cousin Eddie (Randy Quaid) and his own family show up uninvited in their RV, the massive lights display Clark sets up doesn't work at times, dinner turns out to be a complete disaster, and the tree is burned down. The Griswolds' snooty neighbors (Nicholas Guest and Julia Louis- Dreyfus) also suffer some problems as a result of the Griswolds' Christmas mishaps. Even through all this, though, Clark keeps his cool, until one final bombshell is dropped. See, as a big Christmas surprise for his family, he was planning on using his anticipated Christmas bonus from work to help finance the construction of a swimming pool in their backyard. Problem is, his a-hole boss Fred Shirley (Brian Doyle- Murray) decided to cancel giving out Christmas bonuses that year without bothering to tell Clark or any other employees in advance, instead giving Clark a year membership in a "Jelly of the month club." At this, Clark goes completely nuts. He launches into a colorful, hilarious rant about his boss, goes to extreme lengths to get a new tree, and things go even more out of control from there. Things finally work out for everyone in the end, though, and while the Griswolds' Christmas obviously isn't the perfect Rockwell vision Clark had hoped it would be, it becomes one which they will undoubtedly be able to look back on and have a good laugh about for many years to come.
There are just a few problems with 'Christmas Vacation' that I can think of. One is that, while Clark is mostly a likable and sympathetic character just trying to give his family the best Christmas possible, there are two segments which I really didn't like seeing: His making a lot of rather off- color comments to a busty department store clerk, and later when fantasizing about the new pool, he imagines the same clerk stripping to her swimsuit there. It's rather difficult to feel sympathy for a married man who flirts with and fantasizes about other women. Also, we definitely get the feeling that the Griswolds' neighbors disliked Clark even before all this holiday hell began (With Clark likely feeling the same way about them), but it's never said why that's the case, what their beef with him was. Lastly (And this is just a minor problem), the cover of the movie is a bit misleading. It shows Clark in a Santa suit being electrocuted by his house's lights. That unfortunately never happens in the film, it's seems like that's the only cliche/ hangup associated with Christmas lights that ISN'T used for laughs in 'Christmas Vacation.'
That being said, 'Christmas Vacation' is still an awesome film. The laughs never stop, and many of the joke scenes in it have since become legendary, such as a scene when Clark goes sledding with a sled that has been coated with an experimental lubricant, all the scenes involving the installation and operation of the house's lights, and Clark's aforementioned rant about his boss (I can just imagine what it must have been like to be with Hughes when he was writing Clark's lines for that scene). Chevy Chase does a great job as usual playing the enthusiastic yet manic Clark Griswold, and the actors playing his long- suffering family are all great, too. Randy Quaid stands out as Cousin Eddie, an incredibly funny character. He makes for a kind of interesting case: You're torn between revulsion over how incredibly crass and dim- witted he is, and feeling at least some admiration of him for the fact that he is a pretty good- natured guy who genuinely cares about both the Griswolds and his own family, even if he does have very funny ways of showing it. He dominates every scene he appears in.
And there we have 'National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.' A hilarious Christmas romp which is another Christmas tradition for me. Come back soon, I still have a few more films to look at in my series!
