As the summer approaches its final turn, I wanted to make sure we took a little brief "film vacation" by showcasing National Lampoons Vacation as our Rewind Wednesday feature! This is a classic summer movie that can be viewed almost every other week on someone's tv station. This 1983 comedy film directed by Harold Ramis and starring Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Randy Quaid, Dana Barron and Anthony Michael Hall. It was also feature numerous others, such as comedians John Candy and Imogene Coca, supermodel Christie Brinkley, and future 30 Rock regular Jane Krakowski.
Every summer Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) takes his family on a little trip. This year he went too far. The Griswold family are on a quest. A quest to a Walley World theme park for a family vacation, but things aren't going to go exactly as planned. Along the way to Walley World, everything and everything that can go wrong does, and Clark ends up with Aunt Edna (Imogene Coca), who adds more fun to this wallop of a comedy. The laughter just escalates more and more as we see Clark's dreams flush down the toilet farther and farther. Basically, this film starts out strong and ends strong.
National Lampoons Vacation would do significantly well at the box-office, earning more than $61 million in the United States with an estimated budget of $15 million. In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted National Lampoon's Vacation the 46th greatest comedy film of all time. It is widely considered to be the best film in National Lampoon's series of Vacation films, and continues to be a popular film and a staple on cable television channels.
The original story is (reportedly) a fictionalized account of his own family's ill-fated trip to Disneyland (changed to Walley World for the film) when Hughes was a boy. The success of the movie helped launch his screenwriting career. Is it no surprise that John Hughes, the king writer/director of the 80's comedy films wrote this, or that Harold Ramis (Groundhog Day, Ghostbusters, Striped, Analyze This) directed the film?
This is one of those type of movies that shows you how to make a timeless, original, hysterical, and satirical comedy!!
A clip from when Clark has reached his boiling point!! LOL
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