How much should a film that is effectively a hybrid reboot and sequel of another reference the original? If you’re the team behind the new Vacation, the answer is apparently, “a whole load, but also get meta with it”. So here’s the first trailer for the new comedy, full of red band material.
Vacation finds Ed Helms inheriting the role of Rusty Griswold from 1983’s National Lampoon’s Vacation. Now grown, married and with a family of his own, he’s worried that his kids are stagnating. So Rusty decides to pack James (Skyler Gisondo), Kevin (Steele Stebbins) and wife Debbie (Christina Applegate) on a cross-country trip to Walley World, the theme park his own father tried to reach years before.
And what would a Vacation movie be without that very father, as Rusty stops in to visit Clark (Chevy Chase) and Ellen Griswold (Beverly D’Angelo) on their way, along with a drop-in on Rusty’s sister Audrey (Leslie Mann) and her hubby, Stone Crandall (Chris Hemsworth).
The tone here seems to be winking fealty to the original with a dash of millennial uncertainty about what it actually was, and a helping of jokes about bodily functions. Oh, and the expected use of Chris Hemsworth’s natural advantages along with his comic timing, which is no surprise to anyone who has seen either Avengers movie (“...he’s adopted.”)
With Keegan-Michael Key, Nick Kroll, Charlie Day, Regina Hall and Kaitlin Olson in the cast, the new Vacation comes from writers-turned-directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein. It’ll visit our cinemas on November 13.