National Lampoon's Vacation

Movie review by Afsheen Nomai, Common Sense Media
National Lampoon's Vacation Poster Image

Common Sense says

age 16+

Funny family comedy is dated and risqué.

R 1983 99 minutes
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Parents say

age 13+

Based on 22 reviews

Kids say

age 13+

Based on 66 reviews

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A Lot or a Little?

The parents' guide to what's in this movie.

What Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that National Lampoon's Vacation is a 1983 comedy filled with inappropriate behavior from both adults and tweens. There is frequent profanity, including a tirade filled with "f--k," brief female nudity (breasts), sexual innuendo, an incest joke, and a dog killed after being left leashed to the back bumper of a station wagon after driving down the highway. Though drug use and sex are never seen, they're very frequently implied and are generally the butts of jokes. The father comes close to cheating on his wife but doesn't succeed and realizes that he loves his wife. As with every other social taboo this film encounters, the father's almost-cheating is treated as a joke, as he is rather inept at it. Two tween boys look at pornographic magazines and talk about masturbation. Two tween girls look at a shoebox one of them keeps that's filled with marijuana; she later gives five joints to the girl on the road trip, who acts giggly and high in later scenes. An elderly woman dies on a road trip and is left in the rain on a lawn chair in the backyard of a relative who isn't home. There's also gunplay and use of the word "retard."

Community Reviews

AlaskaDad
AlaskaDad Adult
August 2, 2020
age 18+

"Hasn't aged well" would be putting it lightly.

Our family absolutely loves Christmas Vacation, and had what we thought were good memories of the first in the "Vacation" series -- holy cow were we wrong! It's full of so many cringe-inducing racist and misogynistic "jokes" that we had to just turn it off after attempting to skip forward to a better part. Turns out, there is no better part. If you do decide to watch it with your kids it should only be as a cautionary tale about how backwards popular culture really was only a few decades ago.

This title has:

Too much sex
Too much swearing
Too much drinking/drugs/smoking
2 people found this helpful.
John B.
John B. Adult
December 8, 2017
age 15+

Cringingly sexist and racist

I'm a liberal atheist guy who doesn't have a problem with nudity, but I have a big problem with this movie filled with sex jokes that are all at the expense of women. Add a gobsmackingly racist scene, and the weak humor isn't reason enough to bother renting this. Some movies have sex humor that goes over my kids' heads, but my kids ages 10 to 12 got everything. It wasn't subtle. Quite the opposite: the humor was heavy-handed and since the only "joke" was that they were talking about sex, the movie has to hit you over the head with it repeatedly. Every sex reference revolved around women being objects for men: boys looking at porn, girl being kissed by her dad, pointless scene to show mom topless in the shower. At that point I walked out. Some examples: 1) The family visits poor rural relatives whose tween daughter brags that her Dad told her she's the best French kisser. Hah hah. 2) Poor rural tween boy tells his tween cousin that he has some nudie magazines, and then the scene cuts to the boys reading porn. There's no punch line beyond the fact that they look at porn. 3) Dad encounters a sexy woman in a convertible who flirts with him and he speeds up to try to catch her. 4) The dad pretends a banana is a knife and pulls back the shower curtain while he wife showers and scares her. The nudity (breasts) was brief but also gratuitous. 5) Dad takes a wrong turn and ends up in a bad part of town, where "bad" means African American. Everyone is either a pimp, prostitute, drug dealer, or thief. The African Americans treat the family rudely and steal their hubcabs. The scene is supposed to be funny because we get to see the white family in scary black part of town and watch the black folk act like stereotypical black people are expected to. Hilarious, huh?

This title has:

Too much sex
1 person found this helpful.
See all 22 parent reviews

What's the Story?

Poor Clark Griswald (Chevy Chase). Nothing seems to go right for him and his dream vacation, a road trip from Chicago to California's Walley World amusement park. Things go wrong from the start when a slick car salesman (Eugene Levy) convinces Clark to settle for a wood-paneled, puke-green station wagon dubbed "The Family Truckster" ("You think you hate it now, but just wait until you drive it"). On the road, anything that can go wrong does go wrong. Aunt Edna dies in the car, the dog pees on the picnic basket, and the credit cards get canceled. Meanwhile, an attractive blond woman in a red-hot Ferrari (Christie Brinkley) flirts with Clark, almost leading to the demise of his marriage. With the family's bond barely intact, they arrive at their destination only to find the home of Marty Moose closed for repairs.

Is It Any Good?

This is a fun classic comedy, and though it's rated R, it comes off as relatively tame by today's standards. Even kids who didn't grow up with Chevy Chase will enjoy watching him play his usual deadpan character. The humor is silly and sometimes offensive, which will prove irresistible to adolescents. Though some of the jokes and references are dated, parents and older teens will still find much to enjoy in this goofy comedy.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about comedies. How can a dead dog -- or a dead old lady -- be funny? Can you think of other popular movies that turn disgusting and depraved situations into laughs -- or at least try to?

  • How far can filmmakers push before they've crossed the line into true tasteless territory? To whom do you think most of these movies are targeted? Why do you think that?

  • Which aspects of the movie seem dated? Why?

  • How is sexuality portrayed in the movie, among tweens as well as adults?

Movie Details

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