National Lampoon's Vacation

The first film in the Vacation comedy franchise stars Chevy Chase as Clark Griswold, an ad exec who becomes consumed with taking his family cross-country to Wally World, a California amusement park. Less a vacation than a descent into a peculiarly American kind of hell, the Griswolds suffer through ...more

Considering the number of talented people involved in this film, it is not surprising that the laughs are constant. Conversely, considering the number of talented people involved in this film, it is surprising it isn't a bit sharper and deeper with its comedy. Harold Ramis showed in subsequent comedies that he was capable of finding an emotional level to match the laughs (Groundhog Day, Stuart Saves His Family, and even, to a lesser extent, Ghostbusters), and screenwriter John Hughes invested ...more