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  Goes
On Vacation
July 17, 2006
Is there any time more dreadful than the summer, with its heat and sun and tans and people demanding that you go outdoors and get into water and stuff? I’m shuddering with complex feelings of self-loathing and fear just thinking about it as I type this. I mean, beaches. Beaches filled with people. People from New York. People from New York with too-tight shorts and gold chains tangled in their chest hair. Talking. Loudly. On cell phones. While swimming in the ocean.
Someone hold me.
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 National Lampoon's Vacation - 20th Anniversary Special Edition
by Shawn McLoughlin
July 17, 2006
Who hasn’t been on a vacation from Hell?
I don’t think I’ve met a single person whose family
hasn’t gone on a trip with the best of intentions without
something going wrong. Either they lost their car keys, forgot
their airline tickets, or were imprisoned in Turkey and sentenced
to 20 years for trying to smuggle hashish. Regardless of the
incident, in general it’s something that nearly everyone
can relate to. In National Lampoon’s Vacation,
some things tend to go wrong on the Griswold’s family
vacation. “Some things” being the summation of
every wrong thing that has happened to everyone you ever knew
on every vacation they ever took – and all at the same
time.
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 National
Lampoon's European Vacation
by John Felix
July 18, 2006
In the Chevy Chase filmography, which includes
soaring highs, middling material, overlooked failures and
god-awful bombs (I won’t name names when in reference
to said scale; well, okay, Modern Problems is awesome), National Lampoon’s Vacation series certainly fills in every facet of the scale. The first Vacation is seen as the true classic
of the series and certainly holds up to repeat viewings to
this day. Christmas Vacation, while not the
brightest of the bunch, certainly has a cult following surrounding
it. And then there’s the bastard child of the series: European Vacation. Most people regard European
Vacation as ranking somewhere between Funny
Farm and Cops and Robbersons. At
least most people had the best intentions when they forgot
the very existence of Vegas Vacation.
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 Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas - Criterion Collection
by Cary Christopher
July 19, 2006
I know when most of you think “summer/vacation movie” you think of family
classics like National
Lampoon’s Vacation or Meatballs. I’m happy for you. You
make up the foundation of our society. Feel free to enjoy living your lives
safely and securely in your house/apartment, curling up with your cat and/or
small pet rodent, while remembering your lost innocence.
Me, I’m the jaded, cynical type. I went to camp once a long time ago. I’ve
seen things since that would make my former counselors cringe. That’s why
there’s only one summer vacation movie for me: Terry Gilliam’s Fear and
Loathing in Las Vegas.
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 National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation - Special Edition
by Jim McDevitt
July 20 , 2006
Like
all the movies in the Vacation series, National Lampoon’s
Christmas Vacation is comedy grounded in the concept
that what can go wrong will go wrong - and will be
funny because of it. Screenwriter John Hughes (who also wrote Vacation and European Vacation)
was a master at creating this type of comedy (witness the
utterly brilliant Planes, Trains and Automobiles).
I must admit I am a big fan of this type of humor, but Christmas
Vacation rises to another level for one reason: it
has heart. It is hilarious and absurd, but never does it fail
to capture the spirit of the holiday upon which it is built.
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 Vegas
Vacation
by Larry Phillips
July 21 , 2006
This time, the Griswolds are on a roll.”
With that wince-inducing tagline, an extremely lackluster
trailer, and a derivative one-sheet, the forth of Chevy Chase’s Vacation films was thrust upon theater-goers
a full eight years since the last outing (National
Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation).
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