Ah, family. Sorry, AAAHHH! Family!!!!
The Griswold’s are back for another vacation; this time it’s at home. Clark, Ellen, Audrey and Rusty are having to prepare for the rest of the Griswold family to arrive for the holiday season. What seems like a lovely, easy set-up soon ends in disaster on the only scale you can measure it on, the Griswold scale. From runaway sledding, to a sloth-like brother-in-law, to a fried cat, there are plenty of laughs to be had at this holiday affair.
I’m not sure where the drop off actually occurred when Vacation jumped to European Vacation. Maybe the drop off of Harold Ramis from the directing portion of the film put a continuity damper on the second film. I can’t say it was the writing because John Hughes wrote all the films. So, with that said, the difference between European Vacation and Christmas Vacation was directors. Jeremiah S. Chechik had a better grasp on the characters and seemed to use them all appropriately. Instead of trying to divvy up the comedy between characters, the sole leader of the film was Chevy Chase. He led the good, the bad and the ugly of the comedy. The other factor that helped Christmas Vacation was how tight the world was in which the Griswold’s lived in. The film was mostly shot at their house, which helped to contain the comedy. The other parts, at work and out on the snowbanks, were kept short and sweet (as they should have been). This type of containment that Hughes set up for Chechik was pretty solid and didn’t allow for many mistakes. In such a contained environment it also helped Chase do his thing. All of these elements are why this movie is memorable and fun.
On a side note, I’m well aware that breaking down a comedy like this into such drab detail could potentially bore the (bleep) out of you, but it’s necessary to explain why this film worked so darn well.
Of course, if you want to be honest about it, it’s just a fun, dumb comedy about everyone’s nightmare of hosting their own warped family for Christmas. Everyone has an Cousin Eddie in their family. Cousin Eddie is a man who is so down and out that you feel bad for him, but at the same time you understand that his extreme stupidity is funny and annoying. All of these characters that John Hughes has created around the existing family are fantastic generalizations and, again, this is probably yet another reason why we love the movie so much.
Is the movie perfect? No way. It’s certainly not any of the Christmas classics that I mentioned at the very beginning of this review. What it lacks in joy it makes up in ‘everybody can relate’ and that’s why people are drawn to it. Plus, there’s nothing like a great Chevy Chase tirade.
It’s gonna be a bluuuuuuuuuu-ray Christmas
Every year Warner Brothers introduces an ‘ultimate collector’s edition’ for its movies. What exactly does that entail? That’s a fabulous question. Last year it was the Christmas Story‘s turn to get that and this year it’s Christmas Vacation. What makes it an ‘Ultimate Collector’s Edition’ isn’t the features, but the goodies that come with an already marvelous blu-ray. In the large tin can that came with Christmas Vacation on blu-ray you get the following:
– Marty Moose Collectible Ornament
– Marty Moose Christmas hat
– Snow Powder
– Coasters with the family on them
I love this stuff! It makes a $49.99 value of the film and the fact that’s blu-ray makes it even sweeter. Speaking of the blu-ray, the 1080p picture is pretty darn solid. You get the unnecessarily high-definition version of the film that has some pretty outstanding audio for a comedy. With both audio and video at a pretty sweet point, it’s hard to believe that the film is 20 years old. The only sign of age is Clark’s glasses and the family’s neighbor’s high-quality CD player (yikes!).