We’re quickly approaching the end of 2017, and I gotta say, it’s been a good year for Critical Mass. Welcome to those newer people, and thank you to all of those consistent supporters who give me a read despite the dry humor, and terribly overbearing opinion flinging. You’re all awesome! Being as it’s time to be giving, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to do a sort of holiday grab bag of reviews. There probably won’t be much rhyme or reason to the upcoming reviews, but I think some of them might help you better understand this crotchety critic a bit better, and even better, you’ll learn about some things that might broaden your media horizons, for better or worse. You’ve been warned!
I promised holiday appropriate stuff, and I aim to deliver this week. That’s why this week, we’re looking at one of my favorite holiday film franchises, Christmas Vacation! Wait, what? You didn’t know this was a franchise? Where have you been?! Okay, so you didn’t know that there were more than the first one. Well take a seat, assuming you’re not already sitting and let’s rap! Hopefully, you’re aware of the holiday classic that is National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. It’s the heartwarming tale of the Griswold family and father, Clark’s, endeavor to host the perfect Christmas for himself and his extended family. It’s chock full of classic moments, quotable lines, and good hearty Christmas cheer. It’s gone down in history as a holiday staple for a lot of people. I promise. Okay, probably just for me a few others, but we’re cool, y’all!
The first Christmas Vacation was a critical and box office hit, making back nearly three times what it cost in theaters, and probably raking in way more than that in home video sales over the years. I’m not sure that it was ever intended to be a series though. I draw this conclusion because there have been other Vacation films made since. There was the Vegas Vacation, the European Vacation, and recently, a do-over of Vacation the first one. All of these focus on Clark Griswold and his family as they get into silly antics, and run amok in various locales. This was the formula that they started with, and despite being pretty cringe worthy at times, it’s served them pretty well. That’s why, when I saw National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie’s Island Adventure, I was a little confused. Who looked at the original, saw Eddie, played by Randy Quaid, and thought, “The world needs more of that!”? I don’t know. I really don’t. What I do know is that the producers must not have had too much faith in it because it was released straight to TV.
Alrighty, enough harping for now. Let’s jump in. So the movie is not terribly concerned with how long it’s been since Eddie crashed the original Christmas Vacation. It just couldn’t even right now, guys! But it has been a little while as we find out that Eddie, well meaning though he may be, produced yet another child. He made more you guys! Isn’t that just wonderful! In a twist that could have been written by a third grader though, this child is smart! Like skipping grades in school smart. And he’s a wealth of common sense. Eddie is still married to Catherine, and they’ve traded up from the RV to an actual house. Also, Audrey is living with them after some huge break up for some reason. I guess to clear her head. They actually got the actress who played the character in the original Vacation film to reprise the role. Kudos to them I suppose. Don’t get too excited, because that’s the only character besides Eddie and Catherine that make an appearance, and I really don’t like the way they wrote her. But we’ll get to that.
We find Eddie is working for a nuclear facility. Do what now?! No, no, they test the side effects of prolonged radiation exposure on him because despite being dumber than a sack of hammers, Eddie apparently has a superpower. He heals real good, and so apparently the radiation doesn’t actually have any long term effects on him. Also, his ‘co-worker’ is a chimpanzee. The scientists do a lot of intelligence testing on these too and, unsurprisingly, the chimp is consistently smarter than Eddie. This leads to Eddie getting fired due to budget cuts. He’s broken, but goes in to beg for his job back. In the process, he insults the chimp, and the chimp bits the crap out of him. At this point, Eddie could have sued for just all the money, a fact of which the nuclear facility management is well aware, but instead, they talk Eddie into taking an all-expenses paid trip to the South Pacific instead. Because Eddie is anything if not consistent, he takes this sweet deal despite the protests of his unusually smart son.
And so as their house is literally flooding from broken pipes, they decide they’re going to have the best vacation ever. Oh, and cousin Audrey is going to come, and also Uncle Nick because they just happen to be living in the house at the time, for some reason. As they’re getting on the plane, Eric Idle of Monty Python fame makes a cameo appearance to pull some slapstick shenanigans with Randy Quaid because he probably had to do some community service due to a crack possession charge or something. But they make it to the South Pacific, and they’re greeted by the lovely Muka Luka Miki, played by Sung Hi Lee, whose name Eddie will mispronounce for the rest of the film because it’s just that kind of movie. Now I have to mention at this point everything wrong with Audrey, at least to me. She’s actually got a reason for living with Eddie and Catherine. She had been in a relationship in Chicago that had gone sour, and she had been heartbroken. I think the heartache was on account of knowing that she actually needed the money bad enough that she’d actually have to take this crummy job, but I guess Clark thought that movie to wherever it is that Eddie lives would give her a chance to get her head back on straight. That will be important later.
Anyway, Muka Luka Miki shows them around the island a little, an exercise which culminates in a luau. So maybe it’s Hawaii, but I don’t think that they’re ever specific about it. There’s some small talk, the dog humps things in the background, and we’re introduced to, I think, Melbourne Jack, a seaplane pilot who also happens to be a hotelier. That’s a word. Google it! Anyway, there’s some more small talk, then I zone out, and then when I finally reach consciousness again, Eddie, Catherine, Audrey, Muka Luka Miki, Uncle Nick, the dog, and Third, Eddie’s son, are all getting on a boat that has been leant to them. There’s no captain, but it’s cool because Uncle Nick has apparently been piloting boats since the dawn of time. Oh, wait, no he piloted boats a few times during the dawn of time. Oh well, no problem. Except that it is. They eventually run aground. Eddie, wanting to be the hero, decides that he’s going to swim into the shore of this island, and investigate… Except that the water is only waist deep so he and the whole family wade in instead. However, none of those dumb frackers bothers to anchor the boat, and so the boat drifts off without them and now they’re stranded. Oh no!
This leads to a whole bunch of shenanigans wherein the family have to figure out how to survive on a deserted island. Eddie decides that he’s going to build Catherine the best house they’ve ever lived in, and Third discovers women via peeping on Muka Luka Miki, who Uncle Nick was also peeping on. Hey, no accounting for taste, right? Audrey complains about how she’s never going to find a man, and here’s the other shoe. I’ve seen Vacation and Christmas Vacation, and never have I gotten the impression that Audrey is some impotent human being, let alone woman, whose self-esteem is directly tied to her relationship status. But in this film all she can talk about is how so-and-so was her one true love, and how she’ll never find love again. It gets pretty tired, and I’m not sure it really fits with how the character was originally established, but whatevs. So in the build-up to Christmas day, they all pitch in to make it a fabulous event. Eddie and Third build the house, Eddie catches a wild boar for the Christmas dinner, Muka Luka Miki keeps up morale, Catherine and Audrey do things, and Uncle Nick hits on Muka Luka Miki relentlessly. Just a good old fashioned Christmas right there.
Somehow, and against all odds, the family actually manage to pull together a pretty good Christmas set up… Mostly… The boar looks delicious, the house looks pretty good, and it’s decorated nicely, and everyone seems happy. Eddie gives a speech about… Something… And then he carries Catherine over the threshold of their new house. That part was pretty sweet. But then the house collapses. No surprise there. All seems lost, but at some point, the hotel guy finds them with his seaplane and the day is saved! He also kindly informs them that he’s been developing a hotel on the other end of the island that they probably could have walked to in a day. Oops… They reminisce about how the island has brought them all closer together, and then the hotel guys falls down a steep hill, and they have to fly him back to the main island. You’d think that with the family being rescued, that the director would just put us out of our misery, but there’s a ‘tense’ scene where Eddie has to land the seaplane in order to save the day.
Anyway, there’s some stuff to tie everything up, and then it’s over… Thankfully! I know it’s a pretty scant recap of the story, but you should see the one on Wikipedia. There just isn’t a lot of story there to recap. It’s pretty thinly assembled. However, it’s not all bad. There are definitely some gaping holes in the story, and the motivations behind the characters, and there are some pretty tired cliches being employed throughout. However, if the idea of the film was to get people in the happy spirit of Christmas, then I think for a select few, this film might actually hit its mark. There are some warm moments, and even a funny moment or two. There are some surprising cameo from some big stars. Eric Idle I mentioned earlier, but Stephen Furst of Babylon 5 fame also makes an appearance as well as Fred Willard. It’s over-the-top most of the time, but it does manage to tie everything together in an almost acceptable way by the end. Look, it’s never going to be a holiday classic, but it does manage to be more than the sum of its parts, barely, and I can commend that. I wouldn’t say go out of your mind trying to track this one down to watch, but if the opportunity should present itself, give it a try and see if movies that are so bad they’re almost good is your thing. Happy holidays, y’all! Stick around because the month promises to be a grab bag of weirdness!
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