December 12th: National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

I first saw National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation when I was about 14 years old, and it was quite simply the funniest film I’d ever seen in my life.

Since then, I’ve watched it quite often, most Christmas holidays I’ve stumbled onto it or pulled out the DVD, and I’ve settled into a new opinion of the film.

It’s still brilliant.

But it’s not as brilliant as I thought as a 14 year old, but then again, what is?

This is the 3rd in the Vacation ‘quadrilogy’ of films (what, you can’t remember ‘Vegas Vacation’?) and once more, we have Chevy Chase and Beverley D’Angelo taking the leads as Clark and Ellen Grisworld. This year, the vacation is all about staying home and having all of the family come to them.

First step is to get a Christmas tree, and that starts the film off on a real high with the driving under the massive lorry carrying the tree trunks. Both funny, and frankly, a good stunt…it starts very well.

The film progresses with lots of amusing bits, with a bit of heart too. For me the low point of it all is when cousin Eddie turns up, I’m just not a fan of this character, and starts to dominate everything. It pulls it around though, just in time for Clark to have his meltdown revolving around his bonus.

The funniest bit of the whole film involves the sledding scene, every single time it makes me laugh out loud really hard, and sometimes I wish the rest of the film would do that. Still, it smashes the six laugh test, even on multiple watches, so it’s 100% worth your time this Christmas.