National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989) – 3/5

Surely worth it during the holidays

„National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation“ or just „Christmas Vacation“ is an American live action film from 1989 and as this one was of course also released during the season, you can say that it is almost exactly 33 years old now. Or slightly over as Christmas here is just four days away and this film came out in early December back then apparently. It runs for slightly over 1.5 hours or if you include the closing credits, then it even comes close to the 100-minute mark. The director is Jeremiah S. Chechik who was only slightly over 30 back when this was made, so he is still alive and well in 2022 and he is working mostly on television episodes nowadays, episodes from shows you may or may not have heard about. Nothing super famous, but also nothing that people have not seen at all. This film here is surely among his most famous releases though. The more known name is the one of writer John Hughes. He was also not too old when he penned the screenplay for this movie and still under the age of 40, but he is sadly of course not with us anymore and died way over a decade ago. Obviously, this film here is not among his most known efforts, not even his most known Christmas-themed effort, but this is mostly because he has just worked on so many movies that are still remembered today and not because this one here is forgotten or so. On the contrary. The fact that it was shown again on the big screen the other day (and I am not even in America) is evidence for the fact that people still remember the film. And many hold it dear.

My screening was a German dub, so as a consequence there were also a handful children in the room and in general it was an okay amount of visitors. Not a great one though as I have witnessed it with screenings of other older films and to be honest I expected more people to come and see the film. It also looked like this on the website from the amount of seats taken, but I guess the fact that it was shown at one o’clock in the afternoon was also a bit of an issue for some. Still props to those who were there and I think the film has a bit of a tradition with the theater where it was shown and apparently it will be on there every year during Christmas time now. Hopefully, more people will come in the following years and I felt that those who were there had a good time. Some even had a great time, like one lady who was constantly commenting and laughing. With some of the humor in here, you could definitely identify Hughes’s footprint. Now let us take a look at the cast: With Chevy Chase, turns 80 next year, I do not have to say a lot. He is the one and only lead in this film and always easy to identify. His wife is played by Beverly d’Angelo and you probably saw her in other films too. Fittingly, she is also part of the cast from „Violent Night“, one of the most talked-about Christmas films from 2022. And CV is also not the only National Lampoon film she has been part of. Yes, there is a series. The Christmas film is a contender for most known. Maybe also for the one that has aged best from all the installments. The family’s son is played by the very young Johnny Galecki („Roseanne“, „The Big Bang Theory“) and if you know it is him, then you will perhaps recognize him. Despite his age, this is not even his earliest performance. Juliette Lewis plays the family’s daughter and she is a few years older than her brother and of course always annoyed by him. She became an Oscar nominee only three years later, actually two you could say given the release dates and day of the Oscar nominations. Who would have guessed back then after her performance here? Not that she is bad or anything, but this is never a film for the actors to show their strengths, rather about the fun to it all and how much Christmas chaos and mayhem you can fit into slightly over 1.5 hours.

This includes literally everything you can think of. There is a great deal of slapstick comedy to it and moments when people are hit in the face with something like how the moment of relaxation up there on the attic ends for Chase’s character. And he was of course locked in accidentally up there. Needless to say. But as for Christmas, well what do we have? The film begins with the family led by the father going on a ride to find their Christmas tree that turns out way too big though and this ride show us that he is also not taking anything from any other traffic participants and he almost seems like a psychopath there. Solid introduction. What follows next is trouble with the Christmas tree lights or actually it is rather the lights for the entire house. Daddy gives the task to get these in order to somebody else of course, but then the lights won’t work eventually, but this gets fixed and it is working like a miracle after some back and forth. When the 24th is moving closer, we also find out a little bit about the presents, but not as much as I would have thought. We only realize there is a cat in one giftbox and this cat is not only locked in there, but also really gets it later on. This was one of the maybe less politically correct moments from the film and with stuff like this you could already get in trouble today in 2022 with all the social justice warriors around. What they will dislike the most about this movie probably, however, is the scene with an actress named Nicolette Scorsese that is not related to Martin Scorsese though. Or I should say scenes because there are two. One with verbal sexual implications, the other with physical nudity. It also gets a bit more graphic than I expected. But she is absolutely beautiful there is no denying. Funny they included all this, but you could see in the almost very first scene in the car already how careful they had to be with swear words and what the father is saying there on one or two occasions. This was apparently what really made Americans upset in the late 1980s and what families did not want their kids to hear. So yeah, this film is from the year of the Fall of the Berlin Wall and this shows you how much time has passed.

As for the cast, there is also Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who plays one of the family’s neighbors. About her, there is not too much to say. She and her man are constantly getting punished despite not doing anything wrong, but the shenanigans of Chase’s character have major impact on them and their house. As for the actress, I don’t like her at all anymore. Her rich background is one thing, but how she constantly feels the need to get political and show us she is not as conservative at all as you could think given her family’s fortune is utterly unlikable. Very hypocritical too. But enough of that. An actor who feels more likable in general and also adds more to the movie is Randy Quaid. He is one of those additions that get in as family members here when the movie continues and bring their own brand of comedy. His best moment was maybe the kidnapping towards the end, well not what happens inside then, but how we see him leave with his truck and then return with the protagonist’s boss as a hostage. That was hilarious again thanks to the lack of political correctness and also how exaggerated it all was. They also did not (ab)use this inclusion longer than they should have. Police is right there and the situation is solved just a little later. The cop there reminded me a bit of the one from „Family Matters“. His comment on how the boss deserved it also could have come from this series. In general, I felt that this film reflected humor and comedy from 80s and 90s sitcoms fairly well. There was one inclusion that the daughter was not happy about her brother sleeping so close to her and she tells her mom and the mom responds that she has to sleep with Chase’s character in the sense that that is even worse. Maybe the funniest moment of the film for me. A touch of „Married… with Children“.

But I am sure that everybody will find something else funny from this movie we have here. It all depends on your taste. Maybe some will like the moment when the delicious Christmas roast unfortunately turns into a catastrophe, even if it looked so mouth-watering. Maybe others will like the idea of the dangerous foams down there and how inevitably it would all have to explode at some point. Which it does at the end and it is almost fireworks and resulted in a pretty nice inclusion of the American national anthem. The Star-Spangled Banner is always nice to listen to, no matter who sings or performs it. Such a great tune! This scene maybe also some would have had problems with. Let’s not even talk about the idea of the German anthem being used for such a purpose. People would be up in arms and the film would not get shown anymore. Censorship galore. But again, another story. Before I get to the end of my review, mentions go out to Doris Roberts who is always easy to identify, but most of all to Mae Questel and even if she lived on for another decade after this film, this was her last on-screen performance and if you look at what she did many decades earlier in animation, then this is definitely a Hollywood icon that deserves to be mentioned. Age-wise, you can say that with this film here she was not anymore in her chameleon days, but her turtle days already. This is pretty much it then. Just some more brainstorming: There is not just a cat in here, but also a dog that causes some chaos. There is a really young girl, who could have delivered on the sweet and innocent front, but truth is she loves to use really obscene language and this is more proof here that this was not intended as a cute and harmless Christmas film, but they were all about the comedy. I mean, even if one issue is fixed in the end (I did not know about these Christmas salary raises, not a thing anymore), almost everything else is chaos and catastrophe almost. But this film is not a catastrophe. Not a revelation either, but surely worth being seen during the holidays. I give it a thumbs-up. The Bing Crosby song is also really nice.