Vacation

Grade: C

Director:  John Francis Daley, Jonathan M. Goldstein

Starring: Ed Helms, Christina Applegate, Skyler Gisondo, Steele Stebbins, Leslie Mann, Chris Hemsworth and Charlie Day

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 39 min.

“I've never even heard of the original vacation,” says young Kevin Griswold on the eve of another misbegotten cross-country family foray in the sequel “Vacation.”

“Doesn't matter,” deadpans Rusty (Ed Helms), scion to Chevy Chase’s Clark Griswold. “The new vacation will stand on its own.”

Not exactly. Vacation is far removed from the original National Lampoon’s Vacation, the 1983 Harold Ramis farce that introduced the world to the Griswolds and their ill-fated misadventure to Walley World, the fictitious amusement park. The film echoed the frustrations of the Reagan-era middle-class and their proud but elusive attempts to realize the American dream.

The new Vacation is a retread as noxious as the Arkansas sewage pond that Rusty, wife Debbie (Christina Applegate), and sons James (Skyler Gisondo) and Kevin (Steele Stebbins) unwittingly wade into en route from Chicago for a return visit to Walley World.

Rusty, now grown into a veritable Clark clone, is a hapless airline pilot for an econo carrier with a stale love life and no respect from his sons. James is a literary-loving introvert, while the foul-mouthed Kevin concocts devious ways to torture his older brother.

So Rusty piles the family into a rented minivan bound for California—if you’re wondering why a commercial pilot couldn’t simply obtain discount tickets so his family could fly to Walley World, well, he can. But then we’d be deprived of such detours as Memphis, Tenn. (accurate U.S. geography not included) to revisit Debbie’s drunken sorority days back when she was known as “Debbie Do-Anything.” A whitewater ride in the Rockies goes awry thanks to a manic depressive guide (Charlie Day). And when Rusty stops to visit sister Audrey (Leslie Mann) and her blow-dried husband (Chris Hemsworth) in Texas, we’re treated to cannibal cows and Hemsworth’s 6-pack and sheathed tube steak.

Along the way, writer-directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein revisit the hot blond in a convertible scene from the original Vacation just to wreck it. It’s an apt metaphor for this risible reprise, which is low on satire and high on gross-out gags, beginning literally seconds into the crude opening credits montage. And let me be clear: profane children are never funny.

Indeed, whenever you hear Lindsey Buckingham’s “Holiday Road,” or Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo pop up for a shot of nostalgia, it comes with a weariness that causes you to momentarily question your affinity for the original National Lampoon’s Vacation.

It’s a bad sign when the funniest character in a comedy is the car—even The Love Bug had Buddy Hackett. The Griswolds’ fictional “Tartan Prancer,” known as “the Honda of Albania,” is a comically inconvenient MPV that has outside cup holders, a CB radio, retractable powers cords designed for corkscrew-shaped outlets, and two fuel tanks with half the gas mileage. The incoherent key fob with a dozen buttons emblazoned with unhelpful symbols like a rabbit, rocket ship, muffin and swastika.

More of this updated, whip smart humor would have helped this Vacation actually stand on its own. Instead, this road trip hits a dead end.

Cedar Rapids

Dunderhead Mifflin

Grade: B

Director: Miguel Arteta

Starring: Ed Helms, John C. Reilly, Anne Heche, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Stephen Root, and Sigourney Weaver

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 26 min.

Cedar Rapids is one of the most adorable movies featuring drugs, alcohol, infidelity, prostitution, bribery, and a fleeting moment of sidelong racism that you’ll ever see. It’s a pint of comic debauchery that goes down smooth and doesn’t leave you with a nasty Hangover.

However, it’s also a film with a bit of an identity crisis. Director Miguel Arteta (The Good Girl; Youth in Revolt) mines yucks from contrasting a clichéd conception of aw-shucks Midwestern mores with the universal ugliness of human greed and frailty. Obviously, decadence and moral decay are not strictly bicoastal phenomena. But, in exposing the underbelly of flyover country for laughs, Arteta and writer Phil Johnson – making his feature debut – uneasily straddle the line between satire and snark.

Following the untimely death of his all-star coworker, insurance salesman Tim Lippe (Ed Helms) is required to venture beyond the confines of his small Wisconsin town to the bright lights of Cedar Rapids, IA for the annual AMSI insurance conference. There, Tim must salvage his company’s reputation by again securing the valued two-diamond award of excellence.

Naïve to the point of delusion, Tim is a goody two-shoes who sports sweater vests and never drinks alcohol, but at the same time is having a fling with his former seventh-grade teacher (Sigourney Weaver), with whom Tim declares he is “pre-engaged.” He has never flown on a plane, stayed in a hotel, drank in a bar, or apparently been in the company of a professional African-American like his convention roommate, Ronald (a marvelous Isiah Whitlock Jr., The Wire).

Tim also finds himself teamed with AMSI regular Dean Ziegler (John C. Reilly), a boozy blowhard holding a deep cynicism for his profession and the faith-based values being foisted by his fellow conventioneers. Together, Ronald and Dean act as the angel and devil on Tim’s unsophisticated shoulders, guiding him into – and out of – the seedy side of town, the insurance game, and the reality of how the two-diamond award is won.

Helms and Reilly’s comedic timing and energy carry Cedar Rapids through its more mundane moments. Still, Reilly’s already played the loudmouth lout in Walk Hard and twice alongside Will Ferrell, and you need look no further than Thursday night TV to see Helms as a Lippe-like nebbish each week on The Office.

The film’s true revelation is Anne Heche, an actress whose underrated ability has always been overshadowed by her tumultuous personal life. Here, she plays Joan, a married insurance agent who uses this soirée as her annual escape from the pressures of marriage and motherhood. Heche fashions the most three-dimensional character in Cedar Rapids, a woman who is at once sexy, sincere, and world weary. The rapport naughty but nurturing Joan develops with Tim casts her as a cowtown counterpart to Vera Farmiga’s character in Up in the Air.

Although they form an unlikely cadre, the four leads are each regular people bound by their shared aspiration for greater glory and a diversion from the stifling demands of everyday. For them, and many, Cedar Rapids is less a place than a state of mind.

Neil Morris

*Originally published at http://goo.gl/HfFzg