National Lampoon's Vacation

Half-baked but occasionally hilarious, National Lampoon's Vacation gets a reasonable amount of mileage out of depicting the disaster-prone journey of a "typical" family of four, the Griswolds of suburban Chicago.

This is one Vacation trip not to be missed.

National Lampoon's Vacation is an enjoyable trip through familiar comedy landscapes.

Despite plenty of gross-out gags and dumb slapstick bits, the careful viewer can occasionally detect some acrid and original satire in this 1983 film.

The result is not so much a comedy about American values as a 2,500 mile skid on a banana skin. The visual gags come thick and fast, and are about as subtly signposted as the exit markers on a freeway.

The result is a confident humor and throwaway style that helps sustain the laughs -- of which there are quite a few.

"Vacation," and especially cousin Eddie have long become oft-referenced parts of the American pop culture lexicon. While not from this episode, we all know the two-word response for when your bathroom's not working. Isn't that national treasure territory?

Sets the standard for the sub-genre of road trip films, and it’s still the best of its ilk...

Some jokes feel a rewrite away from leaning into the right sort of stereotyping rather than the more offensive ones. Still, the comedy's vision of ugly Americanism in America and the scourge of suburbanite selfishness helps it scoot past its problems.

It’s a pleasant diversion, but true comic invention is hard to locate in the meandering screenplay by John Hughes.