national lampoon Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Where do you think you're going? Nobody's leaving. Nobody's walking out on this fun, old-fashioned family Christmas! No, no. We're all in this together. This is a full-blown, four-alarm holiday emergency here! We're gonna press on, and we're gonna have the hap-hap-happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny f**king Kaye. And when Santa squeezes his fat white ass down that chimney tonight, he's gonna find the jolliest bunch of a**holes this side of the nuthouse!

-- Clark W. Griswold (Chevy Chase)

After European Vacation, no one had any reason to believe the Vacation series would get back on track. Not to mention, almost without exception, movie series tend to get worse as they go along, right? Well, not this time.

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation ranks just slightly behind the original in terms of laughs, and it packs in even more heart without resorting to schmaltz. Again, I'm going to give a lot of the credit to John Hughes, the sole writer this time out. He makes just about every line funny, memorable, and quotable. He gives us a whole lot of characters, each well-defined and amusing. Hughes may have hit his peak here unfortunately, because after the following year's Home Alone, the man never wrote a great script again. (I think Dutch is hilarious, but even with all my Hughes love I can't call it "good.")

It was a "last hurrah" of sorts for Chevy Chase, too. Chase is really terrific here in what is, I'm sad to say, his final funny starring role (although I didn't see The Karate Dog). Oh, Chevy. What happened? Beverly D'Angelo returns, and is typically great ("Clark! Slow down! I don't want to spend the holidays dead!"). And my Lord, does Randy Quaid step it up here as Cousin Eddie. Chase's exchanges with Quaid are some of the film's funniest moments ("Can I refill your eggnog for you? Get you something to eat? Drive you out to the middle of nowhere and leave you for dead?"). If Quaid's delivery of gems like "Merry Christmas! Sh*tter was full!" and "That's the gift that keeps on giving the whole year!" don't make you laugh, well ... lighten up.

The hills are alive with the sound of Griswold! This s**t's been around for a very long time!

-- Clark W. Griswold (Chevy Chase)

I'm reviewing all the films in the Vacation series over the next couple weeks, and in preparation I've been re-watching each of the movies. I thought I'd be able to save myself some time and skip National Lampoon's European Vacation, as I just saw it again a couple of months ago. Then I took a seat at the computer and realized I couldn't remember a damn thing about the film. I saw it a few times growing up, I saw it very recently, and yet nothing was sticking out in my mind. European Vacation is that kind of movie -- not terrible necessarily, just instantly and powerfully forgettable.

The movie would seem to have everything going for it. Sure, Harold Ramis was out as director, but was replaced by the great Amy Heckerling (whom I recently saw at an Elvis Costello concert, which earns her unlimited cool points even without the movie career). Heckerling was hot off the excellent Fast Times as Ridgemont High and the cult favorite Johnny Dangerously, and seemed a perfect fit for the material. John Hughes returned to flesh out the story and co-write the script. Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo were reprising their classic roles.

So why is European Vacation so completely underwhelming? I intended to start each Vacation entry with a memorable line from the film, and it took me forever to pick a decent one for European. Where is Hughes' sparkling, endlessly quotable dialogue?

-- Clark W. Griswold (Chevy Chase)

Clark Griswold is my father circa 1988. The glasses. The Izod shirt. The too-short shorts. The unrelenting and misguided enthusiasm for all things family. The barely concealed rage. It's all there. What makes National Lampoon's Vacation work so well, all these years later, is that everyone thinks Clark is based on his or her father. Some of the funniest comedy comes from recognition, and this movie is almost like watching home movies from my youth. Except for the dead aunt on the roof of the car, but we'll get to that in a moment.

They assembled a real dream team for this movie, three giants of comedy at their primes. Behind the camera, you've got Harold Ramis, fresh off his directorial debut (Caddyshack -- not a bad start!). He clearly came to play here, and I'd imagine he had something to do with keeping Chevy Chase's tendency to overact in check. The script was written and based on a short story (click here to read it!) by John Hughes, unquestionably the finest film comedy writer of the 1980s. Disagree with me? Take a look at this list of Hughes scripts produced from 1983 to 1990: Mr. Mom, Vacation, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Some Kind of Wonderful, Planes Trains and Automobiles, She's Having A Baby, Uncle Buck, Christmas Vacation, and Home Alone. The man was a god.

You knew it was coming sooner or later (personally, I'm in favor of later), and Variety has just made it official: National Lampoon will begin production this fall on National Lampoon's 301: The Legend of Awesomest Maximus Wallace Leonidas. Awesome! Looking to spoof such films as 300, Gladiator, Troy and Braveheart, pic will follow an out-of-shape Spartan general named Awesomest who "fails forward on a path to greatness." Hmm, do I smell Ryan Reynolds and Anna Faris circling this script? Written by Jason Burinescu, the film will be produced by National Lampoon, Dan Farah and Burinescu.

Lampoon, who recently began financing and producing their own films in-house, instead of licensing away their name so that it could appear on the cover of crappy Paris Hilton movies, have just completed work on two new flicks: National Lampoon's Ratko: The Dictator's Son and National Lampoon's Bag Boy (based off a script from someone who watched Employee of the Month and actually thought there were ideas in there worthy of further big-screen exploration). I can't remember the last time National Lampoon actually produced an all-out spoof flick (come to think of it, have they ever?), and so part of me is looking forward to seeing what they do with this. I expect a ton of green screen work and shoddy acting (no cast has been announced yet), but hopefully we'll find a few laugh-out-loud moments somewhere in there. There hasn't been a fun spoof since, well -- do we count the original Scary Movie? Will 301 be the exception? Or will we walk away with a list of 301 reasons why the movie should never have been made?

Could it be that we might actually see a film with the National Lampoon name on it that doesn't have to do with pledging a fraternity and/or sleeping with every girl on campus? No offense to Van Wilder and Paris Hilton, but now that National Lampoon is on their own (buying, releasing and producing films in-house), I'd love it if the quality was taken up a notch. Variety tells us that NL has popped its cherry and officially purchased their first film, Electric Apricot, with intentions to release it later this year under the name National Lampoon Presents Electric Apricot -- Quest for Festeroo. And, after reading the plot description, I'm all kinds of stoked.

Pic, which marks the directorial debut of singer/bassist Les Claypool (Primus), is a comedy set in the world of jam bands, and is said to be in the vein of This is Spinal Tap. For anyone that's ever attended a Grateful Dead or Phish concert (and still remembers the experience), then this film is for you. Running down the cast list, there aren't many recognizable names. Seth Green and Matt Stone (South Park co-creator) apparently play tapers (these guys show up to tape each live performance, and most of them can recall set lists going back 10 years). I assume the film will be told in a mockumentary sort of style, while we follow the band around on tour. Having attended some of these shows myself, I know for a fact that there's a ton of room for comedy ... in the parking lot alone.

Aside from Apricot, National Lampoon is also planning to release its first inhouse feature production, National Lampoon's Bagboy, later this year. That film chronicles the trials and tribulations of a teenager who enters the world of competitive grocery store bagging, and stars Brooke Shields, Dennis Farina and Larry Miller.

For its first inhouse feature production, Bagboy, National Lampoon has put together an interesting cast, one that will be headed up by Dennis Farina (who -- get this -- will not be playing a detective or a mobster!). Farina will be joined by Brooke Shields, Richard Kind, Paul Campbell, Marika Dominczyk, Robert Hoffman, Josh Dean, Nick Lashaway, Wesley Jonathan, Larry Miller and Jennifer Summers (who, perhaps, is playing what sounds like the best character of them all -- Serious Looking Girl). Yes, I'm serious.

If you don't recognize a lot of those names, fear not -- neither do I. Some folks, like Kind and Miller, have been around awhile and are great character actors (trust me, you might not know their names, but you know their faces.) On the other hand, Brooke Shields hasn't appeared in a successful feature film since, um ... geez, I have no idea. It's been awhile. As far as Farina goes, he's always good for a laugh (if you don't believe me, do yourself a favor and rent Midnight Run); in Bagboy, he'll be playing an ex-bagging champ who mentors our hero and shows him how to ... bag groceries really fast? Mort Nathan (Boat Trip, Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj) is directing, while the Farrelly Brothers are producing through their Conundrum Entertainment.

Now that National Lampoon is developing and producing films inhouse, I was hoping we might see some quality product leak out. After watching Christmas Vacation last night, I was reminded how long it's been since that's happened. However, I just don't feel good about this film and its lame premise -- one that was already unsuccessfully used in Employee of the Month. What do you think?