Colibel Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Jackson Booth-Millard National Lampoon's Vacation is the most worthwhile, and European Vacation is alright, but this was the one I most looked forward to watching, because I had seen the poster so many times, a man in a Santa suit being electrocuted by Christmas lights, written by John Hughes (The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Home Alone, Beethoven), directed by Jeremiah S. Chechik (Benny & Joon). Basically Christmas is only a few weeks away, the Griswold family are getting ready for the festive season, with husband/father Clark (Chevy Chase), wife/mother Ellen (Beverly D'Angelo), son Rusty "Russ" (Johnny Galecki) and daughter Audrey (Juliette Lewis). Clark drives the family into the country to get a large Christmas tree, but they realise they have not brought any tools to cut the tree down, they are forced to uproot one, before driving home with the tree strapped on the car roof. Soon after, Clark's parents: father Clark Sr. (John Randolph) and mother Nora (Diane Ladd), and Ellen's parents: father Art (E.G. Marshall) and mother Francis (Everybody Loves Raymond's Doris Roberts), arrive to spend Christmas. Their bickering quickly begins to annoy the family, but Clark maintains a positive attitude, determined to have a "fun old-fashioned family Christmas." Clark covers the entire exterior of the house with 25,000 fairy lights, he has many slips and falls trying to attach them, they fail to work at first, as they were accidentally wired through the garage's light switch. When the lights finally come on after various bulb checks, and tampering with the plugs, they temporarily cause a power shortage across the city, and they cause chaos for snobby neighbours the Chesters, Todd (Nicholas Guest) and Margo (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). While admiring the lights on the front yard, Clark is shocked to see Ellen's cousin Catherine (Miriam Flynn) and her husband Eddie (Randy Quaid), they arrive unannounced with their children, Rocky (Cody Burger) and Ruby Sue (Ellen Hamilton Latzen), and their Rottweiler dog, Snots. Eddie confesses that he and his family are living in their RV, as he is broke and was forced to sell the house, Clark offers to buy gifts for Eddie's children, so they can still enjoy Christmas. Clark begins to wonder he has not received his yearly bonus, which he desperately needs for an advance payment he has made to install a new swimming pool. The family have a disastrous Christmas Eve dinner, then Clark receives an envelope, which was overlooked by a messenger the day before, it is not a bonus check, it is a free year's membership for the Jelly of the Month Club. This causes Clark to snap, he goes into a tirade of abuse about his boss, Frank Shirley (Brian Doyle-Murray), and out of anger, requests that he be delivered to the house, so Clark can insult him to his face. Eddie takes this request literally, he drives to Frank's mansion, and kidnaps him, Clark is at first shocked, but he confronts Frank about the cancellation of the employees' Christmas bonuses. Meanwhile, Frank's wife, Helen (Natalia Nogulich), calls the police, and a SWAT team storms the Griswold house, everyone is held at gunpoint, but Frank decides not to press charges, he explains the situation to his wife and the authorities, they scold Frank's for his decision, so he reinstates them (with Clark getting an add-on 20% of his salary). The family head outside, and see what they think is Santa Claus in the sky, Clark tells them it is the Christmas Star, and he finally realises what the holiday means to him. Uncle Lewis (William Hickey) says the light is coming from the sewage treatment plant, he reminds Clark that Eddie has been dumping sewage into a storm drain, Uncle Lewis, before Clark can stop him, Uncle Lewis throws a lit match to the ground, triggering an explosion. Aunt Bethany starts singing "The Star-Spangled Banner", the whole family and the SWAT team join in, gazing at Clark's Santa Claus and reindeer set burning and flying into the distance, everyone then goes inside the house to celebrate, while and Ellen happily share a Christmas kiss. Chase is perhaps a little over-the-top this time as the accident-prone father trying to give his family the best Christmas possible, D'Angelo is alright as the tested wife, Quaid is reasonable as the obnoxious relative, and it's nice to see young Lewis in one of her earliest performances. There is always a preconception that everyone tries, or pretends, to be nice to each other at Christmas, well this movie takes that premise to the extreme, everything you fear could wrong during the festive season will go wrong for the Griswolds, unfortunately the extremity of this stuff is not as well crafted as seen previously, it does make you laugh, but perhaps not enough, overall it is an average seasonal comedy. Okay!

lvstan I took my parents to see this opening night which was December 1, 1989. I am glad I did. All 3 of us could relate to the things we feel WE Must Do" at Christmas Time. From getting the tree to decorating the home! WE put huge expectations hoping everything will turn out fine and of course they don't. This was the 3rd "Vacation" film and most likely the most popular. Millions of us could relate the original "Vacation". The family road trip during the Summer. However 99% could relate to something in "Christmas Vacation". In this film it is of course holiday time and Clark wants to have a big old fashioned family Christmas. This means not only is his parents coming for Christmas but so is his in-laws/ Most importantly however Randy Quaid returns as Cousin Eddie. This film is a laugh a minute. If you don't like cussing and are prudish stay away. I have seen this film every year since 1989 and I still laugh as hard as I did when I saw the first time. The only film I think I have seen more is "The Wizard of Oz". If you have big family gatherings then watch this with them. Everyone will have a good time.

Stephen Bird At this stage in the Vacation series, you'd expect a drop in the overall quality, maybe the laughs have dried up and the series is being milked too much..., oh but no, absolutely and very much no, Christmas Vacation is probably the funniest in the series, despite being the third film in the series. It's old school laughs, stuff you probably wouldn't get away with in this overly-saturated politically correct society of today, and that alone has made the film grow even better with age, as society gets worse, the film gets better.The quintessential Christmas film, for me personally Christmas just wouldn't be the same if we didn't break out the old DVD and watch it at least once, on a personal level this actually is my favourite Christmas film, the reason being because of how realistic it is, compared to other Christmas films that rely on magic, Santa Claus and fictional fairy tales to drive the story, Christmas Vacation doesn't, it instead promotes the truth......The pure and simple truth, in a comical way.It shows that Christmas is stressful, it isn't all that great, it shows that the basis of Christmas is built on money, not on magic, that things go wrong e.g. the Christmas lights that blanket the outside of the house, they won't initially work so Clark Griswold throws a tantrum, that's Christmas, that's proper Christmas.Even for unrelated people things can go wrong e.g. the neighbours, the young fashionable couple that Clark torments something chronic with all the mishaps and accidents, e.g. the icicle that smashes straight through their window without warning.We all have family that comes out of the woodwork every Christmas, and despite being somewhat exaggerated in Christmas Vacation, it still hits the nail on the head and gets the point across..., these people will descend on you and you need the patience of a saint to get through it unscathed, but just as in this film, that very rarely happens, there's always an argument, a fuss, a disagreement, a falling out of some description. And alas somewhere out there, we all have a Cousin Eddie..., an embarrassment of a family that everyone's ashamed of, but still they come, unable to see their own flaws. It's realistic, it's a send up, it's satire at its most grotesque, and this is Christmas whether you like it or not.On another note, true to form, as with every Vacation film, there's a new actor playing the son, Rusty Griswold..., the lad portraying Rusty here is none other than Johnny Galecki, most famous for playing Leonard in the hit TV series "The Big Bang Theory"

Leofwine_draca A fun, Christmas-themed comedy movie featuring Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo. I liked this more than NATIONAL LAMPOON'S European VACATION, although I still haven't seen the original VACATION as yet. This film plays out as you'd expect, featuring Chase juggling the demands of his visiting family members with putting on the whole Christmas razzle-dazzle.The first half of this film is particularly strong when it focuses on decent slapstick moments: the whole situation with the Christmas lights, the stuff in the attic, and the bit with the staple gun, which is my favourite moment. By the time all of the old-timers show up, it does start to get bogged down a bit, although the film is enlivened by the presence of Randy Quaid's enjoyably scuzzy cousin and there are some hilarious scenes like the turkey carving.Occasionally, and especially towards the end, Christmas VACATION descends into schmaltz, but then that's down to John Hughes who can never resist inserting some sentimentality into his work (it's even there in my favourite of his films, PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES, although John Candy is so sympathetic that it works). Chase and D'Angelo are on top form here and the film as a a whole is difficult to dislike as it has so much energy and so many constant gags. Watch out for a fresh-faced Juliette Lewis in one of her earlier performances.