Vacation takes moviegoers on an infernal ride

It would be difficult to conceive of a movie more out of touch with reality and decency than the recently released remake of Vacation. Admittedly, secular cultural forces started dissembling the nuclear family long before Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase), in the original 1983 film, station-wagoned his wife, daughter, and son, Rusty, from Chicago to fictional Walley World in Los Angeles. Directors John Daley and Jonathan Goldstein—also two of the remake’s three writers—roll out a traditional family unit in the new version, but they plaster it in nastiness.

Buckle up.

Rusty Griswold (Ed Helms), now a pilot for a discount airline, wants to relive the cross-country journey he took as a teenager more than 30 years before. He drives his wife, Debbie (Christina Applegate), and two sons in a rented “2015 Tartan Prancer”—the so-called “Honda of Albania”—from the Windy City to Walley World. Along the way, the Griswolds experience several misadventures, including swimming in a sewage dump and running out of gas in the middle of the desert.

In the first Vacation, a relatively small number of vulgar episodes interrupt an otherwise inoffensive—and dull—box-office hit. But Daley and Goldstein build obscenities into every part of their vehicle. The opening montage sets the pace. Happy holiday photos are partially obscured then fully uncovered to reveal a shocking or lewd spectacle. (The closing credits revisit this motif, outdoing the opening in bawdiness.) In the film’s first scene, turbulence causes Rusty, who’s chatting in the cabin, to assault a female passenger.

Molestation is funny business, apparently, and there’s more of it down the road.

Rusty returns home to find his preteen son, Kevin (Steele Stebbins), has scrawled crudities across his older brother’s guitar. But evidently James (Skyler Gisondo) deserves it. James’ parents and younger brother continually deride him for his love of literature. And Kevin tortures James for much of the vacation, twice attempting to suffocate him by tying a plastic bag around his head.

Yes, roll down your windows for some fresh air.

The Griswolds stop by Debbie’s alma mater, where she gets drunk at a sorority party. They later visit Rusty’s sister, whose husband poses indecently in front of his in-laws. And throughout the trip, the Griswolds trade expletives like noxious breath mints. Worst of all, the film chortles through an ongoing pedophilia gag with an apparently maniacal trucker (Norman Reedus).

You’re supposed to be laughing at this stuff.

Now, I’ll own up to two or three chuckles, but the film (rated R for crude and sexual content throughout, and brief nudity) fails as straight comedy and as satire, if the latter was even intended. Truly, it’s hard to see Vacation as anything but a demolition of the family.

After Rusty blows up the rental car by pressing the muffin button on a convoluted key fob, Debbie asks, “Can you please just admit that this vacation was a mistake?”

That, I can do.