Did you ever think that having the song "Holiday Road" stuck in your head for days would be the best part of a movie? Well just wait until you see Vacation.
Now let's make a few concessions first. Vacation is a remake, which already starts the movie off on a bad note. And it is a remake of a very, very irritating (for some-to-most people) movie, National Lampoon's Vacation. It is actually painful to write those words about a John Hughes-penned film, yet not as painful as actually watching National Lampoon's Vacation. (Or Planes, Trains & Automobiles, for that matter).
There is probably a large contingent of people who have lots of nostalgic feelings about the original Vacation, and are thus slightly blind to the infuriating nature of the plotline. (And rightly so, because it's kind of—key words being kind of—a classic now). But just for fun, let's remind ourselves that it was a movie that made humor out of the following things: A family accidentally tying a dog to the bumper of a car before a drive on the highway, robbing a hotel clerk because he won't cash a check, leaving the corpse of a family member on the back porch of a house and a father going skinny-dipping with a beautiful Ferrari-driving woman he met on the highway. Catastrophes! Aren't they fun?
Clearly the bar for the Vacation remake is set...well, somewhere that's not very high. Surely if you are obsessed with Clark Griswold and his ridiculous family you will find Rusty's hijinks hiiiiilarious, but for the rest of us we kind of just vacillated between being annoyed, letting out minor chuckles (Ed Helms does deserves props for trying so gosh darn hard) and feeling like you are going to throw up. And not just during the scenes where you are witnessing actual throw up. If you are part of the former group, there are spoilers ahead.
If you are part of the latter group, you're not going to waste your time seeing the movie yourselves, so why not hate-read through our list of Vacation's awful jokes—ranked from best to worst, naturally.
13. Chris Hemsworth plays Audrey's (a.k.a. Leslie Mann) husband, complete with a top-notch Southern accent and a complete obliviousness to the fact that his giant man-bulge is constantly hanging out of his drawers. But any excuse to see his body is a plus, really, no matter how funny the joke is.
12. Rusty's hands-down favorite road trip car game is to sing along to Seal's "Kiss From a Rose." This is the kind of dumb joke we want from Vacation—less throw up, more Ed Helms singing Seal.
11. "So you wanna redo your vacation from 30 years ago?" "This will be completely different....the new vacation will stand on its own." Obligatory self-aware joke about remake? Check.
10. Just like his pop, Rusty isn't exactly a go-getter in the career department. In fact, he works for Econo Air, which specializes in the South Bend-Chicago leg and employs pilots with literal dementia. Vacation: 1, Airline Industry: 0.
9. Rusty and his wife decide to sneak out during the roadtrip to have sex on the Four Corners (that's right, sex in every state!) only to be interrupted by a straight-up orgy, complete with a few surprise guests who shall remain unnamed.
8. Rusty doesn't know what a rim job is. Enough said.
7. The family visits Rusty's wife's alma mater and she competes in a drinking contest in an attempt to prove that she's not old. This was the vomit we referenced earlier...so much vomit. So much unnecessary vomit.
6. Oh whaddya know? The Griswold family has car trouble! But surely they won't have another crash that ends in a fiery wreck...oh wait.
5. Rusty literally washes a hotel bathtub with a wad of pubic hair. Why, Vacation, why?
4. Oh whaddya know? There's a hot lady in the car next to the Griswolds! Surely Rusty won't be sexually attracted to her...oh wait.
3. Clark now owns a B&B and surprise! He sucks at his job. Funny if you like Clark, the opposite if you don't.
2. Six words: Rusty, four-wheeler, unsuspecting cow, guts. Again...why, Vacation, why?
1. Eight more words: Idiot family goes hot-tubbing in raw sewage.