National Lampoon's European Vacation

1985

Action / Adventure / Comedy / Family

59
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 49% · 30 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 49% · 50K ratings
IMDb Rating 6.2/10 10 75678 75.7K

london, england chaos game show vacation travel family vacation

Plot summary

The Griswolds win a vacation to Europe on a game show, and so pack their bags for the continent. They do their best to catch the flavor of Europe, but they just don't know how to be be good tourists. Besides, they have trouble taking holidays in countries where they CAN speak the language.

Director

Amy Heckerling Photo
Amy Heckerling

Top cast

Dana Hill Photo
Dana Hill as Audrey Griswold
William Zabka Photo
William Zabka as Jack
Salvatore Billa Photo
Salvatore Billa as Policeman
Wendy Goldman Photo
Wendy Goldman as Stewardess
720p.BluRay 1080p.BluRay
750.42 MB
1280*720
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 35 min
Seeds 5
1.57 GB
1920*1072
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 34 min
Seeds 73

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by Peach-2 6 / 10

Not as good as the first, not as bad as they say...

Although it's not as good as the first film, this sequel isn't as terrible as I've heard people say. There are some very funny moments and this is Chevy Chase's best screen role. The only thing that's ever really bothered me about the Vacation films is that the Griswold's children are always played by different actors. Maybe I'm being picky, but I like continuity once in a while. There is a nice cameo from Eric Idle that was very funny and I liked the spoof of The Sound Of Music. Worth a watch.
Reviewed by IonicBreezeMachine 6 / 10

The Griswolds are back minus Ramis and Hughes and while not terrible, it is felt.

We once again follow the Griswold family consisting of the overly ambitious Clark (Chevy Chase), more down to Earth Ellen (Beverly D'Angelo) and their teenage children son Rusty (Jason Lively) who's mind is primarily on partying and girls, and Audrey (Dana Hill) whose focus is mainly on her boyfriend Jack (William Zabka) while she deals with insecurities regarding her weight and appearance. After winning an all expenses paid European vacation on game show, Pig in a Poke, the Griswolds are once again off on a vacation as shenanigans ensue.Following the success of the first National Lampoon's Vacation, Warner Bros. Approached John Hughes for a sequel which Hughes turned down, though he would later return to the series adapting his short story Christmas '59 into National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. With Harold Ramis and John Hughes not returning for what at the time was known as Vacation II, the studio hired Amy Heckerling of Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Johnny Dangerously to direct and Robert Klane who at that point was best known for Carl Riner's 1970 film Where's Poppa? And a number of comedies that flopped. When the movie was released it had a bigger opening weekend than its predecessor, but didn't have staying power at the box office making $12 million less than the first film at the box office while still turning a respectable profit. Critical reception was more negative this time around and audiences, while slightly more forgiving, were more split on the film. There are some good moments in European Vacation, but there's also some missteps that keep it from being in company with the first film.Unlike the first film where the episodic story had an engine driving us forward with the arrival to Wally World, European Vacation doesn't have that engine to it. Because the Griswold's have most of their expenses taken care of for them by the gameshow package and they just leisurely go around European locations before transitioning to the next one, it puts a damper on the comic energy because we don't have anything to really build upon. With the road to Wally World in the first one there was a sense of building tension and dwindling resources as the status of the "Family Truckster" deteriorated more and more over time and tensions built among the Griswolds that set the stage for payoffs and escalation to complement the episodic nature of the story and we really don't have that here. The closest we get to something like that is Dana Hill's Audrey pining over her boyfriend Jack played by William Zabka and the take on Audrey is absolutely obnoxious because she only ever does two things 1) complain about the fattiness of the food and 2) whine about how much she misses Jack. Dana Hill is a fine actress if given the right material but she becomes a grating presence when her character's defining features are missing her boyfriend who's positioned as being rather verbally abusive and uncaring which is never really addressed in the movie. Eventually we do get some of that energy in the last third where the Griswolds are in Rome and they become entangled with a thief played by Victor Lanoux and it's probably the closest we get to the level we saw in the first film. There are still some very funny sequences in the movie particularly in Germany where we see Clark involved in Bavarian folk dancing that escalates into a full scale riot and Chevy Chase's line readings can still get a laugh such as when they're stuck in a roundabout in London, but without that engine driving the sequences forward they don't gain the same momentum.European Vacation isn't a complete failure as there's still some very solid comedic setpieces and performances and there is novelty mined from the European setting. Unfortunately Robert Klane just doesn't understand these characters like Hughes did and they feel less grounded than they were in the first film and more like chaos engines for the various European cities and they lose a bit of their relatability with this fantasy of an all expenses paid European vacation pretty far removed from a cross country road trip to a Disneyland analog. Worth a viewing if you like these characters, but it's not to the level of the first film.
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