The commercial parody for the Peacemaker military jet (with “Someone to Watch Over Me” in the background) is intelligently acrid view of the American desire for orbiting safeguards against their enemies. Maybe I’m predisposed to unsung satires from SNL alumni but Deal of the Century is stratified alongside 1981’s Neighbors and The Distinguished Gentleman as an olive-black send-up of the swap meet for WMD’s.

Chevy Chase doesn’t pratfall his way through this and his cigar-suckling cynicism is a snidely blithe, enjoyably daft facsimile of Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca (according to his voiceover- “She checked in with a guy half her size and twice her age.”). The most transparent sample of physical comedy is Chase’s right foot as a target. His hardware is also listed in his business card and a catalog. I do wonder if it has a Hallmark holiday edition for yuletide coup d’etats?

William Friedkin doesn’t eviscerate the film with tonally inconsistent tomfoolery. Wallace Shawn’s suicide and a bullet to Eddie’s foot don’t surrender the film to fulsome sentimentality or sacrifice the film’s savage witticisms. However, a scene between Eddie and his brother underlines the futility of his intermediary profession. Likewise, Gregory Hines is the conscience of the picture as he baptizes himself before the air show. While she is usually a force of nature in science-fiction and action films, Sigourney Weaver wilts as the femme-fatale and widow of Shawn.

The finale in which Hines is whirligiging in a dogfight against the soon-to-be-auctioned plane is hampered by some of the era’s horrid rear-screen projection. Yet it doesn’t conclude on a note of false patriotism and Eddie recalculates his salesmanship into another snake-oil position.

One wishes Friedkin would diversify again for another poisonously funny antidote to today’s unmanned warfare. Paul Brickman’s arsenic contributions cannot be diminished though. The man who catapulted coming-of-age yarns and Tom Cruise in his undergarments into a sensation also vaults Chase to a noirish antihero.

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What was almost a synergy between Ivan Reitman and Chevy Chase ultimately became a John Carpenter spy thriller. Which is probably for the best since Chase at this lull in his career was adamant about abdicating comedies for more serious roles. In that regard, Memoirs of an Invisible Man was a departure for both Chase and Carpenter and outside of the dazzling special effects (the bubblegum chewing is convincingly levitating), it is a swooning, hard-boiled adventure.

The voiceover from Chase isn’t too verbose but it definitely scratches the Raymond Chandler itch. As was the case with Foul Play and Fletch, Chase is actually superlative as a romantic, lovelorn lead despite his somewhat insular, throwaway sarcasm which is minimized here (the in-joke of his pseudonym as Harvey (Jimmy Stewart’s figment rabbit) is mirthful). His chemistry with the astoundingly pulchritudinous Daryl Hannah is electrifying.

Shirley Walker’s composition while heart-palpitating contains some elements of Flight of the Bumblebee. Not once is the film written as a foolhardy spoof of the H.G. Wells story although it does intersperse low-key laughs and screwball physical comedy such as when Nick (Chase) puppeteers a drunkard’s incapacitated body to hitch a cab ride. In fact, it postulates the eclectic impediments that invisibility would catalyze within the subject. How do you eat Chinese food when “you can’t see your own hands”? Would does one slumber without eyelids? According to Nick, it’s not a dulcet lullaby.

The Magnascopic Laboratories with conspicuous fissures throughout is a preternatural sight and an early calling card for Industrial Light & Magic. Obviously the CIA subplot is a jejune plot device from other pictured but Sam Neil is the X-factor. He is unnerving in the archetypal G-man role.

While it was outside the oeuvres of both Carpenter and Chase, Memoirs of an Invisible Man is observantly acute and monumentally suspenseful. It speculates many of the inquiries that most people would partake in if they were aesthetically nonexistent (ex. At a beach house, Nick eavesdrops on his vacuous cronies and their insolent reactions as to whether he is deceased or not).

VACATION (2015)

To scrutinize what went irredeemably wrong with the latest Vacation reboot is to pinpoint exactly where comedy went awry in the mid-90’s. The Farrelly Brothers came to providence and their movies slathered both gross-out, scatological humor with pathos in equal measure (and to wondrous effect in There’s Something About Mary, Kingpin and Dumb and Dumber). However, every success is the surrogate father of bastardized imitations.

2015’s Vacation is a mean-spirited, consistently unfunny copycat of that era where comedy reached farther down for the gag reflex than the rib tickle. How else to explain the rampant pedophilia jokes (Norman Reedus materializes in a cameo as a scruffy sexual predator who lures children into his truck with a teddy bear) and gay panic scenarios about James (Skyler Gisondo), Rusty’s (a mugging Ed Helms) introspective son.

To their credit, Jonathan M. Goldstein and John Francis Daley don’t waste any time before delving right into comically bankrupt material with an opening montage of random vacation photos over a Holiday Road redux. Rusty’s pubescent son Kevin (Steele Stebbins) is a putrid caricature whose sole purpose is the shock value of a youngster spouting expletives and being an Omen doppelganger to his older, emasculated sibling. You’ll want to whisk him off the screen and you’ll quickly denounce Rusty and Debbie (Christina Applegate) as abhorrent parents for raising and placating such a prick.

Each joke is accompanied by a painfully obvious execution. For example, Rusty brags about the sensor system in his Prancer but it quickly malfunctions when he wedges his arm in the door. Rinse and repeat the Murphy’s Law ad nauseum. We could realistically empathize with the Griswolds when they accidentally took a detour in the 1983 classic or when they skulked for miles in search of the seasonal tree in Christmas Vacation. Nothing is remotely corporeal or grounded when they frolic in raw sewage or nearly descend down a waterfall.

A stab at meta references (ala the infinitely superior 21 and 22 Jump Street) to James not “hearing about the original vacation” backfire because the phraseology doesn’t flow in the context. As Stone Crandell, the Adonis husband of Audrey (Leslie Mann), a stranded Chris Hemsworth is equipped with a gargantuan phallic prop and faucet analogies which are pretty haggard traits for jocular possibilities.

For mercy’s sake, Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo reprise their roles in a rather dejected capacity. Chase augments his Pierce wackiness from Community which is a complete disgrace to the nurturing Clark Griswold we all knew. Glimpsing Chevy fumble with a guitar is as unappealing a sight of forsaken instincts as Jerry Lewis in Hardly Working.

Perhaps, an Audrey-centric sequel might’ve been more fecund terrain since female-driven comedies like Spy and Trainwreck have done blockbuster business and garnered critical acclaim. Alas, we’re being suffocated by this unholy spawn. The ratio hasn’t swung in a continuation of the franchise’s favor. Time to repossess the Truckster and condemn Walley World as a contaminated wasteland.

Rating: .5 out of 5

VEGAS  VACATION

Chevy Chase serenading The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” is a cue to the insipidness ahead for us in Vegas Vacation, the toothless, regurgitated swan song for Chase’s reign over the Vacation label. Stephen Kessler is an inept  hack director who resorts to a record scratch and zany music for guffaws. The one quasi-funny in-joke is Clark’s line that he “doesn’t even recognize [the kids] anymore” because the actors for Audrey and Rusty have been recast with each successive movie.

Like Jerry Lewis who should’ve outgrown his juvenile pratfalls, Chase is obviously anaesthetized as to when he should retire from a young man’s sports like being suspended bodily over the Hoover Dam. Chase is too listless to even lob jeers at Cousin Eddie. At this point, he is a doddering old man without copacetic comic timing.

Wayne Newton was a surprisingly Machiavellian villain in The Adventures of Ford Fairlane but this is a charmless send-up of his glitzy stage persona. Every rimshot is a joyless retread from Eddie’s disability capitalization to Clark yelling for Rusty (Ethan Embry) when he is plainly in sight to Cousin Catherine’s (Miriam Flynn) silent rage over “not having a minute free” and multiple pregnancies.

The Vacation movies don’t necessarily require obscenities for their levity but it’s a snapshot of the zeitgeist that they’ve shackled themselves from the R-rated original to this PG-rated appendage. Squeaky-voiced Wallace Shawn and loutish Randy Quaid can usually disentomb chuckles wherever they are but they are nuisances in this strident outing.

It’s such a tawdry, last-ditch effort to conjure the cockles of the heart when Lindsay Buckingham’s iconic song begins and Clark is revisited by the Girl in the Red Ferrari (Brinkley again). The payoff to the callback is that Brinkley is now a coquettish mom which is a pretty discouraging illustration of the passage of time and the necessity of sowing one’s oats.

After this debacle, Vacation would lie dormant like a Sleeping Giant before New Line bought the rights and began tinkering with the misbegotten notion of a remake. Thankfully cooler heads prevailed and a sequel-reboot is slated for release July 29th with Rusty as the newfangled patriarch. Let’s hope it continues the odd number trend of solid comedies.

Rating: 1 out of 5

NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION

If the dreary European Vacation proved anything, it’s that the Griswolds are at optimal dysfunction when they are stateside which explains why Christmas Vacation is a mirthful, gregarious return-to-form for the franchise. While the ensemble of grandparents is an underwritten afterthought, Chase doesn’t buckle under the herniated pressure and this is only secondary to the first film for quality’s sake.

Of the paramount improvements is the reprise of Cousin Eddie and honestly, Randy Quaid plunders a majority of the yuk-yuks with his sweetly panhandling act. It’s difficult not to snicker when Eddie misconstrues Clark’s “heart bigger than his brain” insult as a compliment or when Eddie is disseminating his septic tank into the gutter because the “shitter was full”.

Chase exhibits a naturalistic chemistry with the ravishing D’Angelo but his security blanket are side-splitting scenes of quietly seething resentment with Quaid (“Anything I can do for ya?…Drive you out to the middle of nowhere, leave you for dead?”). John Hughes bores straight to the irritants of the season (ex. The Christmas lights assembly, gift-wrapping, the tree selection, etc.).

Personally, this might be the funniest performance by Chevy in the whole series. His innuendo-laden Freudian slips with a department store employee and his rooftop physical comedy are all pitched perfectly. His finest moment is Clark’s breathlessly verbose tirade against his cold-blooded boss (Brian Doyle Murray) after he supposedly receives his bonus check. Chase seizes the George Carlin-esque monologue and recites it in an outburst that is both senseless and achingly human.

Next door to the Griswolds is the zenithal target for Clark’s Murphy Law: two postmodern yuppies without a family to gather around the fireplace (the enjoyably stiff, Type-A foils Julia Louis Dreyfus and Nicholas Guest). The height of madcap lunacy is the squirrel chase and Jeremiah Chechik displays a knack for Mel Brooks delirium with Angelo Badalamenti’s score as an impish companion to the wildly overamped proceedings.

Today, this is deservedly lauded as a perennial holiday classic and it is repeated on television stations. For all intensive purposes, Christmas Vacation overshadows the 1983 paradigm in most viewers’ memories. If this had concluded in a trilogy, it would’ve been a hermetic franchise with terrific bookends. Purposelessly the Griswolds would sojourn to Las Vegas in their next disenchanting add-on.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Odd that the theme song for these films is “Holiday Road” and so far in the series, they haven’t acknowledged any holidays except for the yuletide season. Much to my chagrin, the Pig in a Poke jingle is catchy. However, the first signpost of errantly unsavory jollity in the inferior, redundantly lewd European Vacation is when the host John Astin passionately kisses Audrey (the nasally Dana Hill) in a distinctly predatory, creepy way.

As before, Chevy is the lifeblood of the franchise with his oblivious Father Knows Best routine. Amy Heckerling is clearly a novice at farce insomuch as she sprains herself early on with a botched Looney Tunes visual gag where Clark’s face is nearly cauterized by a BBQ flame. The grill flames are too low and the cartoonish soot on Clark is not broad enough. She simply cannot grasp slapstick for a supposedly hip female director.

The daydream of Ellen and Clark cavorting with the Royal monarchy is bizarre because it hardly broaches a punchline. Same goes for Rusty’s (the unsightly Jason Lively) nightclub fantasy. Audrey’s nightmare of body dysmorphia is a declawed remix on the Mr. Creosote skit. To top it off, the Sound of Music parody would be more apropos for a lame Family Guy episode.

The notion of the reverse passenger-driver seating and careening on the wrong side of the road is a more affable observation than outright hysterical. More than anything, the Griswolds are no longer the quintessential family; they’re the ugly-American archetypes. Clark’s tour guide factoids about the Stonehenge and Buckingham Palace are typically oafish.

This subsequently is the only theatrical sequel which doesn’t contain Randy Quaid’s buoyantly bawdy trailer-trash Cousin Eddie and it definitely suffers for it. In his place is the recurring character of Eric Idle’s The Bike Rider who is the laughingstock of the Griswolds’ recklessly dunderheaded streak (the geyser of blood squirting from his wrist (“Just a flesh wound”) is blissfully funny gallows humor on the wavelength of Monty Python).

How could John Hughes the originator of the series be so dreadfully wrongheaded on this international trip? The potshots at transatlantic culture are sordidly mean-spirited (the snobbish French waiter), it doesn’t possess warm-hearted pathos beneath its breastplate and there is no destination point for the Griswolds, just a caterpillar of sloppy episodes. Already in their sophomore slump, this could’ve been the cessation of the Griswolds’  travelogue monkeyshines.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

Only a week away from the release of the new sequel reboot of the Vacation series on July 29th and now would be the apt time to revisit the zeitgeist when Chevy Chase was a comedy demigod.

NATIONAL LAMPOON’S VACATION

It might be hard to believe for anyone under 30 but Chevy Chase was the first breakout star from Saturday Night Live. Now he is mired in temperamental controversy with his resignation from Community but he was only on SNL for the maiden season before he embarked on a lucrative film career. His early film success spawned three undisputed comedy classics- Caddyshack, Fletch and National Lampoon’s Vacation.

With the training wheels removed after Caddyshack, Harold Ramis is more polished in his handling of Vacation. No more coming-of-age subplots or unnecessary deviations but some gags lose their luster from repetition (Brinkley cameo, the Holiday Road anthem, etc.). John Hughes’ hospitable, gradually gut-busting script firmly revolves around the Griswold family and their patriarch Clark’s (Chase) rhapsody to have a cross-country adventure en route to the Wally World amusement park.

It’s an understatement that Chase is flawless as the overzealous father Clark. His desperation to provide ecumenical fun to his entire family is congenial and adds a warmth to the normally aloof Chase who usually rises above his stark situations with sardonic asides ala Fletch. He is elated and optimistic over the simplest of mundane rituals – the car trade-in. His Mr. Magoo double-take over his flattened former vehicle is rib-tickling.

The farcical elements of Vacation are a springboard for Murphy’s Law (“Nothing worthwhile is easy”). Despite the contrivances, Vacation is teeming with relatable scenarios of travel (the discordant singalongs, the Augean motels, sightseeing, etc.) and wry Walt Disney satire. Once Clark’s frangible exterior is dispirited by the misadventures, the glint of unhinged mania in Chase’s one-track demeanor is fabulously funny.

Sometimes, the humor is delectably politically incorrect such as when the Griswolds detour through an urban neighborhood that is crime-ridden (Clark’s stab at slang “What it is homes?”), Clark’s adulterous flirtation with the Girl in the Red Ferrari (Christie Brinkley) and an inopportune roof shrine for the deceased Aunt Edna (Imogene Coca). Midway through the film, we are introduced to the recurring character of Cousin Eddie and Randy Quaid is a supremely uncouth foil for Clark insofar as he is not the bread-winner, his mutated gene pool is inbred (one of his daughter was born without a tongue) and routinely supplicates for astronomical loans.

In the pantheon of Chevy Chase pictures, the identifiably hilarious, sprawling Vacation ranks among the best and his knack with slapstick is nonpareil (his scolding of his children with his wife, Ellen’s (Beverly D’Angelo) panties wrapped around his index finger). It has withstood the test of time because everyone can empathize with Clark’s idealistic purview of a generational bonding experience.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5