Popular reviews

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★ 8

  75

  That grand reveal of the Walley World skyline: one of the greatest matte paintings in the history of the medium.

  Funny movie. If you've seen one Vacation movie, you've seen them all, but Chevy Chase is particularly unhinged in this one. It works because he's not acting at all.

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  Review by Justin Peterson ★★★★★ 6

  (2020 Summer Blockbuster Series)

  The perfect family vacation movie ... that you wished was a little less raunchy when you actually pop it in for the whole family to enjoy!

  "I think you're all fucked in the head. We're ten hours from the fucking fun park and you want to bail out. Well I'll tell you something. This is no longer a vacation. It's a quest. It's a quest for fun. You're gonna have fun, and I'm gonna have fun... We're all gonna have so much fucking fun we're gonna need plastic surgery to remove our goddamn smiles! You'll be whistling 'Zip-A-Dee Doo-Dah' out of your assholes!"

  In Clark W. Griswold we trust ... the flawed but relatable everyman American…

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  Review by Jizzmonkey ★★★★★ 1

  Middle-class Griswold, pulling up to ask for directions: "Pardon me. I wonder if you could tell me how to get back on the expressway?" Outraged pimp, in reply: "Go fuck your mama." This road film is a no-filler series of episodic comedy genius, a gentle heart beating at its core, its production made possible by creativity allowed to shine without being suffocated by senseless and controlling censorship as is the current norm.

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  Review by Matt Singer ★★★

  Holiday rooooAAAAOOOoooaaaoooaaaooooad. Holiday rooooAAAAOOOoooaaaoooaaaooooad.

  There's one scene here that now (and then too, frankly) is in such poor taste, where the Griswolds get lost on the "wrong side of town" and a bunch of African Americans steal their hubcaps and give them bad directions. It's just awful (on his commentary track, which was recorded at least a decade ago, Harold Ramis claimed he no longer would have put that scene in the movie; I can only imagine what he would have said now). That sequence alone requires *at least* a one-star deduction. Maybe two. Maybe more.

  The rest has its moments. The last sequence at Walley World is the part I still love and I'm not even sure why. Maybe it taps into some kind of empty theme park fantasy. Or I just love CHARIOTS OF FIRE references.

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  Review by Mikael Stånggren ★★★★

  - Hey, you got Pac-Man?

  - No.

  - You got Space Invaders?

  - Nope.

  - You got Asteroids?

  - No, but my dad does. He can't even sit on the toilet some days.

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  Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★½ 8

  Now that I've seen the remake/sequel and "Christmas Vacation", I have finally finished watching the original film, which I believe set the tone and function of a whole genre.

  As you can see from my rating, even though I understand the comedy's appeal and why it achieved the level of popularity it did, I sadly failed to enjoy it in its entirety. Some of the lines will stay with me for a long time (the whole sequence on the hood was hilarious) and Chevy is incredible at delivering these wild reactions, as well as pulling most of the physical work. Although I find many of the remakes' stops more memorable, like the college party with the slide, the hotel scene…

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  Review by Bryan Espitia 🎃 ★★★ 4

  Clark Griswold, lovable family man or deranged killer? I’m leaning towards the latter on this one guys.

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  Review by Kat ★★ 14

  Chevy chase is an asshole, and a dog killer. Aunt Edna is my spirit animal and they did her dirty.

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  Review by 🔪 Leighton Trent 🔪 ★★★½ 8

  "I think you're all fucked in the head. We're ten hours from the fucking fun park and you want to bail out. Well, I'll tell you something. This is no longer a vacation. It's a quest. It's a quest for fun. You're gonna have fun, and I'm gonna have fun... We're all gonna have so much fucking fun we're gonna need plastic surgery to remove our goddamn smiles! You'll be whistling 'Zip-A-Dee Doo-Dah' out of your assholes!"

  Considering my wife and I are about to go on the road with our two kiddos and drive almost eight hours down to Orange Beach, Alabama to stay for a week, I figured there couldn't be a better way to cement my first…

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  Review by Jonathan White ½ 24

  Painful.

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  Review by Joshua ★★★★ 1

  “Excuse me, could you please tell me how to get back on the express way?”
  “Fuck yo mama.”
  “Thank you very much.”

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  Review by Niko Ramses ★★★★

  Throughout his filmography, Harold Ramis has always found a way of imbuing his works with a layer of deep emotional humanity despite the overwhelming absurdity that the narratives themselves are composed of. This was true for Groundhog Day and it is all the same for 1983's National Lampoon's Vacation.

  Whereas Groundhog Day was a film seeped in existential dread spurred from the inability to escape life's monotonous cycles of repetition, the existential peril that emerges in Vacation exists within the internal struggles of Chevy Chase's protagonist Clark Griswold, an everyman who desperately wants to give his family the perfect summer road trip vacation that he never had. With each stop the family makes along the way, you see the man…