European Vacation

"Kids!  Big Ben!  Parliament!"

National Lampoon's European Vacation is probably the Vacation film that I've seen the fewest times, and possibly the one I like the least.  I don't even own Vegas Vacation, so maybe this one juuust gets the edge for the few laughs I get.

Why do I own this one at all?  Because they packaged the first film with this one for less than $10 on DVD and I couldn't resist the deal in 2006.

European Vacation was the only window to Europe that I had as a kid.  My family was never going overseas.  We didn't have the money for that, and the economy was so shitty during the Reagan years that politicians and Hollywood films were touting the awesomeness of the U.S.A. so that people wouldn't think to go anywhere else.

At the time, I drank that Kool-Aid down.  I can remember Lee Greenwood's stupid "God Bless The U.S.A." song on the radio, and I can remember singing patriotic songs in school as if the ideals of The American Dream were a given.  I'm sure my dad really enjoyed all the patriotism — he had time to do so when he was laid off for 2 1/2 years as the manufacturing sector gasped for breath.

I didn't realize until much later that most Americans have a hilariously narrow view of the rest of the world, fueled by the ignorance in films like this one.  Every time Hollywood sets a film in Europe, they play to stereotypes so that ignorant people can follow along.

I didn't know any better when I was younger, but now films like this kinda piss me off.

Consider the incredibly negative depiction of Europe here (obviously played up for comedy).  You can't understand the English hotel clerk.  The Brits don't have bathrooms.  They're super nice, to the point of idiotic.  The French will curse at you if they realize you're an American.  Someone will steal your camera.  You'll get to Rome and get wrapped up in international intrigue.  You'll get back home and feel so glad to see the Statue of Liberty, your cares will just melt away.

Okay, maybe some of that's true.

Of course, to the film's credit, we do get an American family that does all the stupid American things when abroad.  They wear berets in France.  They buy ridiculous Italian clothing.  They get on a rotary near Big Ben and Parliament, and stay there.  They have no idea what they're doing, and it's funny because it's true.

So America doesn't get a free pass here.  When Americans go abroad, they do dumb shit.

Anyway, enough about that for now.

Ever wonder why the Griswald children change in every film?  Well, the easy answer is, some of them are dead.  Dana Hill, who plays Audrey Griswald here, fantasizes about overeating European foods at about the 16:00 mark.  In 1996, Hill died of a paralytic stroke brought on by years of difficulties with diabetes. Yikes.

Then there's the career of Jason Lively, who plays Rusty Griswald here.  The last film he did was in the early 1990s, and he's still living.  Not as bad as death by stroke, but still.

Paul McDowell, Ballard Berkeley, and Eric Idle play the three consecutive English motorists that Clark Griswald hits with the rental car.  American audiences know Eric Idle from Monty Python, but most Americans have never heard of the other two.  Turns out, both of them are pretty widely respected character actors in English television.  Berkeley played Major Gowen on "Fawlty Towers."  The film gets these things right.

There are positives to this movie.  You've just got to dig.

This is by far the dirtiest of the Vacation films, though, with a bare breast count in the dozens.  You get gunplay, robbers, chase sequences, and a chest beating anthem over the closing credits about how, like, totally awesomer America is compared to all those frou-frou-ey European countries.  The song is called "Back in America" by a band called Network, and for some reason the song is on iTunes.  I'm serious.

Shit like this is what convinces Americans that the rest of the world isn't just inferior, but that it doesn't matter, either.  That kind of nationalistic bullshit just pisses me off.  I'm glad I don't watch this film very often.  Bleh.