My parents' generation had Miracle on 34th Street; my generation has National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, the best Christmas movie of the Millennial generation. Watching this movie (in spite of its crass language and partial nudity) has become a holiday tradition in many families' households every December and there's an easy reason why...it's freakin' hilarious and easily the best of all the Vacation flicks.
Christmas Vacation highlights everything that sucks about the holidays:
1) Searching for the "perfect" Christmas tree in the freezing cold
2) Visiting with pain-in-the-ass relatives
3) Hanging Christmas lights that never work
4) Realizing you're too old to go sledding
5) Having your shitter be full
It's perfect satire because we all look so fondly on all these holiday traditions, but, in reality, they're kind of a pain in the ass. Like Clark, we get our hopes up, dreaming of a perfect holiday with family, but nothing ever goes smoothly, and, even when it does, no one really notices or appreciates it.
Actually, Clark's disaster holiday is fairly tame by modern standards. Today he would be sprayed with mace trying to buy an X-box or trampled trying to enter a Walmart and he'd be divorced and Rusty would be secretly free-basing in the laundry room and Audrey would be pregnant and blow guys for a ride to the mall. Let's face it, late 80s disasters were nothing compared to the shit that goes down in the New Millennium.
Speaking of the Griswold family, this is easily my favorite family line-up. Of course you've got Chevy as the patriarch and his boner-inducing wife, Beverly D'Angelo, but the kids are by far the best of the series with the head nerd from Big Bang Theory taking over the reigns of Rusty and then Juliet "The Other Sister" Lewis stepping in as Audrey.
Anyways, that's it for the reviews for 2011. May your holidays be merry and all your shitters be full!
Why It's Awesome: John Hughes has a special talent for finding humor (as dark as it may be sometimes) in everyday situations and no one will ever capture the horror of the holidays better than this movie, which he wrote. The Griswolds are every family who dreams of a perfect holiday...and fail to achieve it.
Best Quotes (All of which have found their way into our family lexicon):
"SQUIRREL!!!"
"I'm gonna get you something (tongue click) reeeal niiiiice."
"That there's an RV."
"They want you to say grace...THE BLESSING!"
"Shitter's full!"
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