Vacation: An appalling trip

Vacation (2015) • View trailer 
TURKEY (no stars). Rated R, for relentless profanity, crude and sexual content, and brief graphic nudity
By Derrick Bang

Wow. And I thought Pixels was bad.

Actually, it is bad. But this one’s worse.

Are you sure this is a good idea? Rusty (Ed Helms, far right) insists that their whitewater
rafting guide's sudden romantic breakup won't affect their excursion down the Colorado
River. The rest of the family — from left, James (Skyler Gisondo), Kevin (Steele Stebbins)
and Debbie (Christina Applegate) — have their doubts...

Even by the deplorable, lowest-common-denominator standards set by the likes of Ted 2 and most Melissa McCarthy vehicles, this updated Vacation is a ghastly train wreck, and an embarrassment to all concerned.

I’m stunned by the notion that writer/directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein actually got paid for their so-called work on this turkey. Where can I get a job like that?

Far from accepting a paycheck for this mess, they should have been forced to surrender every cent they made on previous efforts. Oh, wait ... that would be both Horrible Bosses entries, and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone. Not much profit participation there.

I still can’t fathom how Hollywood works. On the basis of the above, the most recent of which was the gawdawful Horrible Bosses 2, these talentless hacks are “rewarded” with a directorial debut?

We can pray only for celestial justice: that this will be the first and last film ever directed by Daley and Goldstein.

In fairness, this remake is “justified” better than some. Rusty Griswold, the kid who endured the world’s worst family road trip back in 1983’s National Lampoon’s Vacation (and who was played by a young Anthony Michael Hall), has grown up to be a dweeb every bit as inept as Daddy Clark (Chevy Chase, back in the day). Sensing family ennui, the now-adult Rusty decides to spice things up by re-creating that long-ago excursion.

Cue another dire road trip, with all sorts of calamities and opportunities for mortification.

Trouble is, Daley and Goldstein obviously never got past that one-sentence pitch, which somehow buffaloed Warner Bros. execs into bankrolling this disaster. As a result, this new Vacation doesn’t merely feel random, or made up from one day to the next; it’s a blatant exercise in lazy filmmaking.

Cast members don’t even try to emote; everybody just sorta stands around and intones lines, with all the dramatic heft of a toddler learning her first words. I’ll bet these folks didn’t even memorize their dialogue; I’d swear they were reading off-camera cue cards.

It could be argued, of course, that this script didn’t deserve better.

Hall Pass: Automatic detention

Hall Pass (2011) • View trailer for Hall Pass
One star (out of five). Rating: R, and rather generously, for nudity, sexual candor, drug use, profanity and an endless stream of potty humor
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.25.11

In an amusing scene from 1980's Caddyshack, panic erupts in a crowded country club swimming pool when a suspicious brown UFO (unidentified floating object) is seen on the water; anticipation is built, prior to its discovery, with some riffs from John Williams' theme from Jaws. Following a shriek of "Doodie!" from one kid, everybody hops outta the pool, which then is drained and scrubbed.

While Fred (Jason Sudeikis, left) and Rick (Owen Wilson, right) watch in
astonishment, Coakley (Richard Jenkins) demonstrates how an 8 can "pass"
as a 10 by surrounding herself with less attractive friends. (Feminists, it should
be noted, are unlikely to appreciate what constitutes "humor" in this film.)

Bill Murray, perfectly cast as a deranged groundskeeper, finds the offending object at the bottom of the empty pool. He picks it up (mild consternation from all onlookers), takes a sniff and then chomps into it (fainting from some onlookers).

No big deal, of course, because he's immediately realized that it's a Baby Ruth candy bar, which we viewers also know, having earlier seen a couple of children accidentally drop it into the water. But nobody else in the movie knows this crucial piece of information, which is why the scene is so funny.

That's the difference between Harold Ramis, who made his directorial debut with Caddyshack, and the Farrelly brothers, who've returned after a four-year hiatus — sadly, not nearly long enough — to annoy, offend and repulse unsuspecting viewers, with Hall Pass. When Bobby and Peter Farrelly trade in excrement "humor," they employ actual excrement. Sometimes explosively.

This, in the interests of full disclosure, is considered the height of humor in a Farrelly brothers movie: watching a grown man squat, grunt, bare his back end and then use a golf course sand trap as a toilet. And, as an added treat, the camera then lingers on the little brown pile left behind.

This "mishap" results from the ingestion of marijuana brownies, a wheezy plot contrivance that stopped being funny decades ago.

Moments like that tend to overshadow the fitful attempts at relationship dynamics in Hall Pass, which, in better hands, might have blossomed into a halfway decent sex farce. (I'd love to have seen what a French director, such as Francois Veber, could have made of this film's premise.) Because that's the truly frustrating part: The core idea here has potential.