National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation vs. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York
Christmas Vacation is actually a sequel to a non-Christmas movie and that’s what probably saves it from the general suck of serial films. And there probably has never been a better guy for a Christmas comedy than Chevy Chase – a big, clumsy, misguided, well-intentioned, crudely wise-assed idiot man-child. Recent actors like Will Ferrell do a fair job of acting like little kids for comic effect – prancing fairy walks, over-affected voices, etc – Chase perfectly, and naturally, captures the boy inside an adult body. With the exception of Randy Quaid (as a little retard trapped in the physique of a giant retard) the rest of the characters are kind of left as props for Chase’s self-created catastrophes. His exchange with Merry the lingerie girl (“Plenty of shopping days left till Adultery!”) and taking a folding attic ladder to the jaw have kept me in chuckles for a couple of decades.
Home Alone – Take the whole ingenious John Hughes premise of Home Alone, redo it all in NYC and it becomes a pretty lousy, tired premise in a wicked mediocre movie.
My kids love it.
Most kids love it as do many adults who haven’t become sour cultural critics like myself who gnash their teeth at every overplayed Hollywood convention. This one is packed with ‘em. If it weren’t for the violently hilarious slapstick this would be a suckfest like no other. And for that we won’t be thanking Joe Pesci, who’s become a fat, irritating gnome at this point in his career. And definitely not Macaulay Caulkin – the angelic little prick from the first movie became so annoying by this flick that I felt even Santa would want to take the brat apart with an axe… The guy who makes this movie is Daniel Stern – the greatest victim of little Kevin’s wildly violent booby-traps, this dude’s misfortune still gets me laughing until my eyes dehydrate.
Have a Christmas show/movie/song you adore? How about one which brings homicide to your heart? Leave me a comment and we’ll discuss.
Gotta run; The Elf on a Shelf ain’t doing whatever it’s fucking job is supposed to be and the kids have turned into cannibalistic Saturday morning bastards. Order must be restored! Merry Christmas!
Tomorrow: Everything’s Gonna be Cool & Tender Tennessee Christmas – tunes which make Christmas way more fun versus sonic holiday colostomy bags….
(Laughs Out Loud)
“‘Tis the season to be merry.”
“That’s my name!”
“No shit?”
Now brace yourself for this one… who the Hell is Chevy Chase? I remember hearing the name, like, a handful of times when I was a little kid, then never again. What else has he starred in? It’s like you said, he reminds me of Will Ferrell, only more believable.
Ahhhh, Ashkuff – Thanks for reminding me that I’m now on the aging side of a generation gap… Chase was a comedy icon of the late 70′s and 80′s. One of the original Saturday Night Live cast members he’s most famous for the National Lampoon Vacation movies as well as playing Ty Webb in Caddyshack.
My kids love Christmas Vacation, but so far they’ve only seen the TV version, since Merry has a topless scene a little later in the movie.