National Lampoon's Vacation
1983 · Directed by Harold Ramis
Clark Griswold drives his family across the country to a theme park called Walley World. The car gets worse, the dog dies, Aunt Edna gets strapped to the roof. The road-trip comedy template.
Why It's Cult
Vacation is the original — every road-trip comedy since cribs from it. Chevy Chase before the smirk got tired. The wrong-turn-into-East-St.-Louis sequence. Christie Brinkley in the red Ferrari. John Hughes again, working out the family-disaster muscle he'd later use for Christmas Vacation and Home Alone. The movie that proved Americans would pay to watch a vacation go worse than theirs.
The Plot, Officially
Having it all planned down to the last detail, the American, well-meaning paterfamilias, Clark Griswold, and his supportive wife, Ellen, take their two teenage children, Rusty and Audrey, on a cross-country trip from the suburbs of Chicago, all the way to sunny California's Walley World amusement park. However, anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and before long, Ellen's cousin, Catherine, and her husband, Eddie, enter the picture, and Clark is on the verge of blowing a gasket. Now, Roy Walley's wonderful park seems so far away, and even though the prospect of a clandestine meeting with the alluring blonde in a fast, 1981 Ferrari 308 GTSi sounds tempting, Clark must do the right thing, and find the promised land. How hard can it be to have the perfect vacation?
Starring
Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Imogene Coca
Where to Watch
via JustWatch →
