{"id":467272,"date":"2025-12-23T19:47:16","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T19:47:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/467272\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T19:47:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T19:47:16","slug":"christmas-vacation-is-the-funniest-and-most-honest-of-the-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/467272\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Christmas Vacation’ Is The Funniest \u2014 and Most Honest \u2014 of the Series"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tPicking a favorite line from National Lampoon\u2019s Christmas Vacation is nearly impossible, so let\u2019s just go with the one that struck me this year. Chevy Chase<\/a>\u2019s long-suffering Clark W. Griswold is grocery shopping with his sweet but repellent cousin-in-law Eddie, played by Randy Quaid. As they small-talk about work, Eddie asks, \u201cYour company kill off all them people in India not long ago?\u201d To which Clark replies, \u201cNo, we missed out on that one.\u201d I\u2019ve seen this movie easily dozens of times, and I\u2019ve never before picked up on the casual horror of Eddie\u2019s barely interested question or the way Clark reframes the slaughter as a missed opportunity. Next year, a different line will jump out at me. There\u2019s a nearly endless supply.<\/p>\n

\n\tJohn Hughes<\/a>\u2019s\u00a0Vacation\u00a0films are unique in his oeuvre as a screenwriter, in that the jokes take priority over the plot; by the end of the movie, it\u2019s hard to believe that this won\u2019t happen all over again next Christmas, next Easter, or at Rusty\u2019s and Audrey\u2019s future weddings.\u00a0Christmas Vacation\u00a0is Hughes\u2019s highest-octane entry in the series, the most dense with jokes; even the setups are funny (\u201cIt\u2019s a storm sewer. If it fills with gas I pity the person who lights a match within fifty feet of it.\u201d) Of course, many of Hughes\u2019s movies have great bits, especially Ferris Bueller\u2019s Day Off\u00a0and\u00a0Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, but in none of them is the fundamental fabric of the movie made from jokes, so many of which are delightfully wicked.\u00a0Christmas Vacation\u00a0landed in theaters during the holiday season of 1989. A year later, a far more sweet-hearted Hughes-scripted Christmas movie,\u00a0Home Alone, would become one of the highest-grossing comedies ever, sending his work in a different direction.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tOf the three 1980s\u00a0Vacation\u00a0movies, which also include the original\u00a0Vacation\u00a0and the 1985 sequel,\u00a0European Vacation, the Christmas installment is the only one that isn\u2019t directed by a known quantity. And yet to take nothing away from the great John Landis and Amy Heckerling, journeyman director Jeremiah Chechik does the best job in bringing all of Hughes\u2019s gags to brilliant visual life. The movie\u2019s comedic timing is chronometer-certified, the shot framing expert, every little detail perfect, from Cousin Eddie\u2019s square-bottomed black dickie showing through his white V-neck sweater to the array of differently wrapped but identically shaped presents crowding the table in the office of Clark\u2019s boss. Much more than in the first two\u00a0Vacation\u00a0movies, Chechik draws on the heightened visual slapstick of Warner Bros. Looney Tunes shorts, in everything from the whoosh of flame that annihilates Clark\u2019s self-felled Christmas tree, to the cannon-fire impact of the runaway squirrel crashing into Julia Louis Dreyfus\u2019 chest.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tFrom left: Chase as Clark Griswold, Randy Quaid as Cousin Eddie in National Lampoon\u2019s Christmas Vacation.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWarner Bros.\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\n\tChristmas Vacation\u00a0has the best cast of the three original movies, but less appreciated is that it also represents an inflection point in the career of Chevy Chase. The SNL alum was on a good run, coming off of\u00a0Fletch\u00a0and\u00a0Spies Like Us\u00a0and a couple of Oscar hosting gigs, but his film career fell off a ladder after this movie thanks to a series of box-office flops and his unsuitability for manning a late-night desk\u00a0As time continues to churn even recent history to oblivion, it\u2019s increasingly clear that Chase owes any shot he has at immortality to John Hughes. Thanks to the enduring power of the TV holiday movie, Chase is likely to remain forever Clark W. Griswold, the last true family man, the guy who would cut a down-payment check he can\u2019t cover to put in a backyard swimming pool in the mostly-cold Chicago suburbs as a Christmas surprise.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe role is easily the high watermark of Chase\u2019s career, largely because he commits so completely to the bit and, at 45, retains the physical agility to pull off every pratfall. Also, evident for anyone looking closely or even not too closely, Clark Griswold \u2014 like many of Chase\u2019s best characters \u2014 is kind of an asshole himself, and for all that Chase is able to find the character\u2019s redeeming sweetness, the joy is mostly in watching him be a prick. The extremes to which Clark will go to try to make Christmas perfect for his family reveal <\/a>betray near Walter White levels of self-delusion about his own selfishness, since virtually everything he does to make his family happy has nearly the opposite effect. Despite Clark\u2019s protestations of just wanting a \u201cgood old-fashioned Griswold family Christmas,\u201d in a parallel-world drama version of the movie, it\u2019s no stretch to imagine him finally being forced to confess, \u201cI did it for me.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNever is that more apparent than in the central scene that establishes the deeply nostalgic emotional stakes of the movie, when Clark accidentally gets trapped in the attic for the morning and winds up entertaining himself with reel-to-reel movies of his childhood Christmases. The look on Chase\u2019s face as he takes in the memories is priceless, a mix of emotion and excitement, the thrill of reliving the perfect moment from the gauzy past that he\u2019s already spent half the movie trying and failing to resurrect in the present. It\u2019s actually the emotional core of the entire series, the best explanation of who Clark Griswold really is and why he has been relentlessly torturing his family across the United States and Europe for all these years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut it\u2019s also this desire more than anything else that makes\u00a0Christmas Vacation\u00a0the best and most enduring of the series \u2014 more than any other time of year, the holidays bring with them that particular mix of nostalgia and expectation around family that makes them such a fulcrum of guilt, disappointment, and regret. Hughes\u2019s script captures perfectly the collision between our desire for the holidays to conform to the rose-colored memories of the past and the unpleasant fact that, even during the holidays, people continue to be as stubbornly imperfect as they are during the rest of the year. Clark\u2019s parents and his in-laws always fight, and they keep fighting right through Christmas. Cousin Eddie\u2019s myopically bad decisions and misplaced priorities are his hallmark, and here they help get a cat killed while his dog destroys Clark\u2019s house. Clark\u2019s boss, Frank Shirley (Brian Doyle-Murray), is a miser \u2014 why is it any real surprise that he\u2019s cut out Christmas bonuses without telling anyone? At nearly Clark\u2019s lowest moment, when he finally admits to his father his true memories about his childhood holidays \u2014 far from the sentimentalized reel-to-reels, they \u201cwere always such a mess\u201d \u2014 his father replies that he only got through \u201cwith a little help from Jack Daniels.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe truth is that for most people, these conflicted feelings around the holidays never get resolved on Christmas Eve in a Hollywood ending. Of course neither, really, do they for Clark. Let\u2019s not forget that, despite the deliverance of his much-needed bonus (plus 20 percent!), this is still a movie whose last scene features the Chekhov\u2019s-gas cloud explosion of that previously defiled storm sewer, which nearly blows Santa and his reindeer out of the sky and culminates in the singing of the national anthem led by the loopy family aunt.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tKevin Doughten is an editor and publishing executive based in Chicago.
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