40 Years Later, National Lampoon’s Vacation Is Fun But Badly Defanged Suburban Satire

In a performance foreshadowing her venomous, disgusted roles in ‘90s films High Fidelity and American History X, D’Angelo tells her aunt to “Sit down and shut up!” Audrey fails to light the joints Cousin Vicki (Jane Krakowski) gives her, while Rusty shotguns a beer when Dad isn’t looking. He also cheerfully points out to Clark how “you killed a dog.” Under the stress of driving hundreds of miles a day and trying to have a good time, the happy suburban family cracks just like anyone else would. Chase especially reaches a gleefully funny but genuinely unnerving, unhinged place, with Clark telling his wife and offspring “I think you’re all fucked in the head!” Vacation captures how the determination of American families to enjoy themselves every summer can reach a fever pitch of delusion and callous behavior. 

Yet ironically, Ramis and John Hughes have their cake and eat it too like plenty of other comedies from the same period, mocking Clark’s plucky, dumbass attitude while also adopting his repulsion toward anyone who doesn’t share the Griswolds’ middle-class background. When the family drives through St. Louis, looking out from their car at numerous people of color on the street, the dad tells the kids to “see the plight” of the cities—then to roll up the windows. (There isn’t a white extra in sight either.) When they stop for directions, the wagon gets robbed, as well as tagged with the phrase “Honky Lips.” Clark’s polite racism is not inaccurate, but everything about the scene also confirms his white flight paranoia instead of doing anything subversive or interesting with the dynamic. 

Similarly, Cousin Eddie (Randy Quaid) and his family are gross “rednecks” who deserve Clark’s detached disdain, a hotel clerk won’t budge on petty rules about checks and cards, and the mechanic who cheats and threatens Clark is the sheriff of his county. It’s crucial to know at this point that the somehow much nastier original story by John Hughes, “Vacation ‘58,” features the son as the main storyteller, is set in 1958 proper, and is thus much less confused about tone. The patriarch is a raving lunatic who, when he can’t get the trip he wants, outright shoots and injures Walt Disney, putting another nail in the coffin of the post-war American image. 

Chase and Ramis decided the film instead needed to be present day and should be a vehicle for the former. But the revised script’s endless sympathy toward Clark, even when he’s threatening a security guard (John Candy) and diving into a pool naked alongside Christie Brinkley, in her first film appearance, means Vacation is typically pulling punches when it should be biting the nostalgic, consumerist hand that’s feeding it. In 2014, years after his film career had died, Chase left his regular role on Community. There were many reasons for his exit, but he felt his character was always the bigoted butt of the joke. At the end of the day, maybe that was the ultimate difference between him and Bill Murray. The latter never seemed to notice his own absurd, serene confidence on the screen, whereas what lingers with Chase is that insincere smile: begging us to like him when Vacation, and his other vehicles, might have been better if we didn’t always have to.