Vacation Review

Oh boy…if you thought things couldn’t get worse for the summer, it does with this recent comedy sequel/reboot that no one really asked for.  Back in the 80’s, you had comedy classics and fan favorites with National Lampoon’s Vacation being one of them.  That film did a great job making fun of the crazy, wacky yet inventive mis-fortunes of a road trip serving as a template for road films for years to come. Now, with old time franchise or fan favorites of a time period we cannot move on from like Terminator or Jurassic Park, it seems like the 80’s comedy classic starring Chevy Chase, written by John Hughes, and directed by Harold Ramis is now next on the block for remaking to profit off of the work of the original property. It is John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein’s first film to direct with writing credits in Horrible Bosses and Cloudy With A Chance With Meatballs 2 as well as duties to write the Spider-Man reboot for the established Marvel Film Universe.   Does it succeed in updating the roughly 30 year old film that really defined the ideal comedic adventure story for road based stories or is it another botched remake that lacks any creatively funny writing inspirations and direction to really bring out the best in the actors and character/comedy gags? Let’s get started with the gist of the film’s story and everything else after that.

We follow the troubles and misadventures of a now grown up Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms) who is a low level continental pilot to support his family life back at home with his wife Debbie Griswold (Christina Applegate) and his two sons starting with the older brother James (Skyler Gisondo) and younger one Kevin (Steele Stebbins).  Their lives have become dull at home as well as their trips to the cabin along with the disconnection that Rusty feels from his wife and boys. So he decides to shake up their vacation time by going to the revamped Walley World that he went to 30 years ago with his father Clark (Chevy Chase), mother Ellen (Beverly D’Angelo) and his sister Audrey (Leslie Mann).  This simple little trip becomes a landmine of misfortunes and wackiness that has the Griswold family go through state to state on a road trip to make this a vacation to remember for better or worse.

That was the main plot and if you have noticed, it is literally the original film set in modern times now and with more low brow crass / sex jokes than you can wash on you when the humor wasn’t about that and more about the crazy, ridiculous misfortunes the family dealt with on the road which is where the original film is still looked upon fondly and has good comedic talent as well as timing to its writing and direction.  This “remake” has none of that and really lays it thick with the gross out humor to hide its bland, thin structure of the plot together for 90 minutes.  The characters are unlikable, moronic stereotypes of the genre and parodies as well with pointless, shoehorned cameos thrown in to get some humor from the types of characters/personalities these actors played in other films/shows that reeks of desperation.  Even the climax of the story really feels like a non-event and just feels uninspired to have nothing more than a beatdown with the characters that is literally unfunny and dumb to the extreme.  There is a vague sense of a plot but none that comes through as interesting since it is to service its “funny” gags throughout its run-time.

Seeing as it is a comedy, this section will look at the theme of the jokes, how it was executed, and whether it is funny or not so we start with what did work. The actors were game at least with the humor and it seem like they were doing their best to make it work so some kudos is deserved more or less.  There are some pretty clever humorous visual gags that did get a chuckle out of me (car function jokes as examples) as well as “some” of the nostalgia, meta humor that reared its head in throughout the film at times.  However, the majority of the humor is (it will get offensive now so see this line as a warning in advance) dick, poo, vomit, and sex both legal and illegal jokes throughout its run-time.  In fact, this is about as raunchy as it gets with a comedy film that it makes the original films look quaint by comparisons.  So if you are not a fan of low brow humor to the extreme degree, this is going to really not click with you which is what I noticed as I saw the same joke get thrown in and beaten over the head repeatedly for 3-5 minutes straight to illicit some kind of laughter no matter how minor or huge it may be (This film makes a ton of dick jokes, so yes that gives me a freebie!).  It just reeks of desperation and lack of creative objective as to the point of this humor to the story which is why it felt very dull by the time they hit the road and the jokes were littered with low brow content that kept getting hammered into us over and over again.

It seems there need to be examples of these jokes to get an idea of what to expect but be forewarned, it will get a bit offensive and gratuitously crude in this section.  There is a joke they beat into the ground with the beginning of the film where Rusty argues with his sons about the young Kevin calling James a pussy by writing Vagina on his guitar followed by Rusty countering this with his writing Penis on top of the crossed out Vagina.  It gets even better with mutilation jokes as they meet up with Audrey and her husband Texan cattle rancher/weatherman Stone Crandall (Chris Hemsworth) as well as him flexing his muscle and huge package down below for 3-5 minutes straight.  There is also a lovely pedophile jokes throughout as well as puking jokes from a fraternity sequence that was grotesque and just meh.  Yeah, these are the kinds of jokes you have throughout the entire film.

So what you are left with are characters that are quite unlikeable, humor with the sensibilities of a juvenile delinquent, and does not attempt to make this vacation unique as it utilizes the original film’s main plot with some variations that fail to really be funny or seem to not be well thought out in the direction/scripting process.  It feels about as torturous as it gets with this vacation road trip and that’s a shame since it had a reliably funny cast members in the lead and the actors including the cameo ones were game to poke fun at the concept and themselves but those moments are very few in between the excessive use of crude humor to hide their inability to be witty or charmingly smart with their writing.  These are the same guys in charge of writing Spider-Man too so that should be some cause of concern if this is the kind of writing we can expect from them in that film.

Vacation is a cruder, brutally violent film that beats the very core meaning of the word “Comedy” to death with its disgusting dick, balls, and vomit jokes as well as lacking any of the original film’s charm, innocently humorous take on the zany, weird events that occur on a road trip with your family.  This film reeks of being nothing more than a cash grab reboot to get an old property back from limbo but it suffers from the same issues as other 80’s films being revived.  It has nothing new to say in its execution of those same ideas and themes which has to really stop but as long as it makes money, then this trend will continue until another collapse occurs with this industry.  This is one vacation you should save your money on and just watch the original film, you will have more fun and it happens to be creative with tremendous amount of effort put into it than what the creative hacks of this sequel/remake put into their attempt to revive it.

Score: ** out of *****
Vacation is a clear representation of what is clearly wrong with modern day comedies today in the film industry.  Morally bankrupted in creativity and skills behind/front of the camera as well as feeling like a slog to get through pacing wise due to the over-reliance on the crude humor to carry a thin structure of the story.  There is nothing else I can write but state that this film will only appeal to the lowest common denominator of audience who can find humor in childish, crude jokes for 90 minutes straight. Hence the reason the score is that high because there is a clear effort from the actors to bring out the funny qualities of the script but lacks a satisfying execution due to the terrible script and weak, inexperience direction from first timers.  For Marvel fans, be very concern that these guys are going to be in charge of writing Spider-Man for 2017.        

Terminator: Genisys Review

After the less than stellar performances of the last two films in this series (critically panned and financially underperformed), it seem like this once beloved Sci-Fi Action Thriller was six feet under.  Until, it was dug up again with the return of Arnold Schwarzenegger on the big screen with another attempt to reboot The Terminator series from its slumber.  It has finally returned after 2-3 years of teasing and advertising of this project with Schwarzenegger returning as the T-800, the cybernetic robot we all love as the good guy teaming up with Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese this time to save the world from Skynet in Terminator: Genisys (Really? Clever…) directed by Alan Taylor (Game of Thrones, Thor: The Dark World) as well as notable actors from other films and TV shows such as Emilia Clarke, Jai Courtney, and Jason Clarke in the lead roles.  Now that this film is a reality, the main question is if it can be a fun, worthy follow-up to the classic films of the past or serve as a dull, painfully dumb re-thread of the previous films before in an attempt to reboot akin to Star Trek from J.J Abrahms?  Let’s dive into it and really start with the most crucial component of any film.

We start with the story or stories being told in this entry of the series with the end of the Future War within sight as John Connor and Kyle Reese are about to deliver the final blow to Skynet with the central core destroyed and Skynet sending a T-800 back into the past as a last ditch effort to prevent the birth of John Connor by killing Sarah Connor in the year 1984.  This seems like a modified rethread of familiar story arcs from the very first film with John sending Kyle back to protect Sarah from the Terminator but not without something going wrong both in the past and future.  Even though Kyle makes it back to 1984, it seems like somebody had sent a few Terminators all over the timeline and has radically change the lives and fate of everyone in the series now.  This time, Sarah Connor has been protected and trained to be a soldier ready for the future war by a modified T-800 known as Pop and programmed as her bodyguard.  This commences an adventure that has our intrepid heroes jumping from place to place to stop Skynet from being born into all of our technology in the year 2017 before it could cause Judgment Day with old familiar clichés and troupes as well as new threats coming along for the ride.

If that sounds like moronic nonsense, you are not the only one to feel that way after leaving the theater from watching this monstrous creation of a film.  It juggles with so many plot threads and explanations as to why this conflict exists that it comes across as contrived and hollow throughout the entire time this story continues to roll forward, causing a mess of twists and generic action/dramatic beats that make very little sense overall.  It doesn’t help that all of the characters lack any real sense of change or personality to them which is a fault of the direction and script literally having no sense of creative meaning to it.  This is about as confusing as it gets with time travel films along with toss away characters that come and go when the plot needs them to be there (wondering what the hell was the point of J.K. Simmons and Matthew Smith in this film).  There is really no sense of pacing or rhyme to the 2 hour runtime of this film making it feel like a slog to get through, systemic of a very messy, mediocre screenplay. It is very much a rethread of the same plot beats and conflicts we have seen in about 4 of these films with very little to no interesting elements to contribute to this story making it feel like fan-fiction that happened to have hundreds of millions of dollars to make it into a reality.  This is only the start of the problems this film exhibits throughout the production.

There is also the matter of the acting talents behind this film featuring quite a few notable names that are undertaking the roles we have come to know as fans of this series would.  The standout is ironically and shockingly Arnold Schwarzenegger as Pop the T-800 guard for Sarah Connor who exhibits a ton of great humorous moments and brims with such weathered humanity that he really provides an anchor for the dramatic moments while everyone else struggles with the sloppy script and half-hearted direction/acting efforts put into their roles.  While Arnie really shines in this film as an actor and action hero, the same cannot be said for the main leads of Jai Courtney and Emilia Clarke as Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor respectively.  They seem to be very bland in their roles as well as having zero chemistry between each other that it comes across like cosplayers trying to act like the characters from the 80’s film and doing an unconvincing job of it.  While that is not the case for Jason Clarke as John Connor, he chews up the scenery as the film progresses making for a very unthreatening, cookie-cutter performance that fails to give the film that tense momentum that made the first two films exhilarating to watch.  As for everyone else, they are either stereotypical to the max or just eye candy filler to give us an action sequence to wake up the viewer from a comatose state of boredom this film projects from the script and direction, giving the actors little to work with to make it fun.  This lame, awkward attempt to be hip and cool for today’s audiences with its cast and setting to revolve around our technology within present day is also evident in the action sequences.

The action set pieces are examples of the shoddy pacing and lack of tension/excitement that is evident throughout the whole film.  They are ambitious in scope and scale but they are also poorly imitating the superhero action styles of Thor way too much that it is hard to really feel any sense of danger to the action.  Plus, it doesn’t help that the CGI really feels too weightless for the machines making it ridiculous that these heroes could survive hand to hand combat with these human killer robots.  Think of it this way, this film is trying to be a Marvel film with the corny jokes and one liner humor as well as the larger than life action set pieces that you would expect from that genre of films along with a forced, will they or won’t they romance that aims to infuriate you entirely but for the wrong reasons.  That wasn’t what made the Terminator films great and exciting in the first place since they were about the human drama that comes from having to fight against a weapon that aims to change our fate and the dramatic consequences that comes from that conflict.  This film really feels manufactured for the Superhero fans rather than fans of Sci-fi or the series creating a disconnecting, insulting feeling of pandering that this film exhibits throughout its runtime in the delivery of the plot points and character development.  It seems like there are very little redeeming qualities to this film but maybe in the technical side of this film, it might have a few spots of inspired creation.

We are now in the home stretch with the technical aspects of the film on display now through the artistic look to the editing and of course, the special effects since the score from Lorne Balfe is just generic, Han Zimmer knock off work and not really worth discussing it in details.  The look of the film is a pretty inspired upgrade (future war) to just typical over design of the settings that missed the point of the original film’s atmosphere to having no sense of character to the setting (2017 world).  I will say that the future war looked cool and a pleasantly intrigue upgrade that was artistically interesting instead of the drab, grimy world that Salvation failed to establish in its film.  However, the look of 1984 from recreating the shots from the original film to fit with their new plot to aesthetics from costumes, lighting, and place are all wrong since it seems cleaner, sleek looking and less scuzzy, grimy looking which the original film had, giving that world such a distinguished look for that time period and atmosphere to the story.  It doesn’t get any better with the way the film is edited in its entirety.

The editing of the film is really disjointed and absolutely has no sense of rhythm or connection within scenes.  There is a clear indication that a character is cut out almost entirely and shows up out of nowhere to be the main, supposedly over-arching villain for this trilogy (I hope not) with no indication of building up to that plot point.  That is just one main example of the editing failing to really allow the viewers to connect the narrative beats clearly but it also spills into the action set pieces as well.  They feel overly long, stretched out, and ludicrously destructive to a comical effect that it is hard to fathom how they could commit the same cardinal mistakes as the last two films in the handling of the action sequences.  So the technical qualities are lacking as well leaving us with the special effects and how they hold up.

Well, the special effects are not as lopsidedly negative as the other elements of this film but it is clearly a mixed bag with some effects working in the practical action beats and the CGI driven ones really look fake, plastic, and ridiculous in contrast to the previous efforts.  There are some cool-looking effects in the action beats that might get the eyebrows raised but not enough to make the gunplay, fisticuffs, and villains look exciting or dangerous seeing as how they spend a majority of the film getting beaten over and over again.  The effects are typical clean, sleek look akin to Star Trek in the views of the future today as in being overused to handle the action and effects driven look to the machines making it feel fake and phony to watch.  While it was stated that there are times that the effects do help make the action set pieces tolerable in its insanity, it does not hide the deficiency within the acting talents, script, and direction that bring this film down into the abyss of mediocrity.

    

This whole film really reeks of studio mandate that was also evident in Jurassic World but at least that film did deliver on what it set out to do as well as being restrained and clever with its nostalgia fan service call backs while this film is more of the same with a different coat of paint.  The main issue with Terminator: Genisys is the purpose for even existing in the first place and the simple reason is name recognition with actor but the series in general.  This was the film series that gave a darker edge to Sci-Fi during the 80’s (Alien started that trend in the 70’s) and to see the film get a cleaner, superhero makeover is just disheartening and completely misses the point of the first two films.  In fact, this film really negates and tarnishes the first two films with its disjointed yet damaging continuity in the plot, horribly bland acting and generic character stereotypes that serve no purpose in the film, and action scenes that fail to really capture the raw, intense danger that those films provided at the time.  Terminator: Genisys is a black spot on this beloved series that will do more harm than good for it as well as providing a nonsensical, moronic reason for this story to even exist in the first place.  It is a re-tread that should have stayed in the past where it belongs now.

Score: ** out of *****

This entry in the series causes more WTF moments than it deserves with its inane plot, bland and generic characters, and anemic action scenes that lack any sense of tension or excitement instilling a superhero style to the whole film that really does not suit this series at all.  It comes across like really wishful, bad fan fiction that somehow got traction to be made for around $180 million dollars and makes one wonder, if anyone even bother reading a script.  This is one entry you should blank out of your mind and ignore the insipid yet inevitable 2 sequels that could be coming around the corner…soon.