From the very start, with its elegant montage of kitschy postcards set to Lindsey Buckingham’s “Holiday Road,” “National Lampoon’s Vacation” (1983) lets the moviegoer know they’re going to get a much stronger effort than what is normally given to a road movie. Written by John Hughes and directed by Harold Ramis, one family’s cross-country quest for a theme-park vacation is an epic comedy that still makes some “best” lists two generations hence. A formula plot played out by masters, suburban dad Chevy Chase leads a cast so deep, you probably won’t realize Jane Krakowski was in it until the credits.
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You know how you want to laugh when you hear somebody fart in public, but you know you shouldn’t, so you just smile and grit your teeth until you hear somebody else laugh, and then you let out a torrent of giggles? Well, “Hot Tub Time Machine 2” (2015) is 93 minutes of that. (There’s even a scene where somebody farts. Go figure.) It’s not for the straitlaced. Anyway, the title is the plot, they say “dick” and “fuck” about 375 times, sequel hijinks ensue, and if you harbor any sense of subversion whatsoever, you will occasionally laugh out loud.
With the success of “The Hangover,” a whole new genre of R-rated, male-oriented comedies was unleashed. Fortunately, “Hot Tub Time Machine” (2010) saw “The Hangover” and raised it one better. Why? Great dialogue, a fully formed plot, it doesn’t try to be something it’s not, and it tries to be the best something it is. Trust me, I was there in the 1980s. It wasn’t pretty, but it was a lot of fun. Just ask the time-traveling protagonist, John Cusack. This is the perfect Friday night movie for a gen-Xer. Order a pizza, down some beers and laugh out loud.
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