As someone who still doesn’t really see the point in a Vacation reboot, I can at least acknowledge that the first red-band trailer for Warner Bros.’ new take on the classic comedy seems to have its head in the right place.
After Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms), now a father, announces his plans to take his family on a cross-country road trip back to Walley World, his wife (Christina Applegate) wryly asks, “So you want to redo your vacation from 30 years ago?” He promises, “This time it will be totally different.” Quips son James (Skyler Gisondo): “I’ve never even heard of the original vacation.” Rusty assures him,”Doesn’t matter, the new vacation will stand on its own, OK?”
That willingness on the part of writer-directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley (who scribed Horrible Bosses 2) to be upfront about their movie’s innate pointlessness and still mine a familiar premise for as many fresh laughs as possible is downright commendable. Had the new Vacation tried to pass itself off as original in any way, a lot of fans of the original would have understandably had a problem with that, but by referencing its roots (and cameoing Chevy Chase and Bevery D’Angelo), the redo is saying that it’s totally aware of our initial apprehension, and asking us to have some faith.
Luckily, with Helms, Applegate, Chris Hemsworth, Charlie Day, Leslie Mann, Keegan Michael-Key, Regina Hall, Michael Peña, Elizabeth Gillies and Nick Kroll all in the cast, that shouldn’t be much of a problem. It would take a pretty terrible script to squander all that talent, and the trailer is packed with enough laughs to convince me that’s just not the case here.
Vacation will hit theaters July 29.
Hoping to bring his family closer together and to recreate his childhood vacation for his own kids, a grown up Rusty Griswold takes his wife and their two sons on a cross-country road trip to the coolest theme park in America, Walley World. Needless to say, things don’t go quite as planned.
