Vacation 2.0 means well but tries too hard, and is ultimately just another pale imitation of the original. The memory of this film will likely not endure beyond one or two gags.  Well I am not surprised that Vacation 2.0 is an awkward film that doesn’t deserve the name Vacation.

According to the box office statistics, this movie grossed $103 million dollars and I simply can’t believe it.  There are only three things that are good about this film.  One is, they kept the original credits and theme song; two Ron Livingston from office-space has a small role in the movie and three I like Christina Applegate who should’ve been more utilized because of her comedy experience going back to Married with Children.  Otherwise, this movie simply sucks.

Vacation 2.0 just tries too hard to remake its predecessor.  There are way too many crude jokes that are contrived, which signals the type of movie technique that is episodic; that is, they try to build the story around the gags and simply use filler for the rest of film.  Clearly, the writers and directors of Vacation 2.0 simply don’t compare to the team of Harold Ramis and John Hughes working in their heyday.

The story starts with a grown up Rusty Griswold who is an airline pilot for some econo-airline.  He has a very estranged relationship with his wife, Debbie (Christina Applegate), and their two sons, the shy and anxious older teenager, James (Skyler Gisondo), and the cruel and mindless younger kid, Kevin (Steele Stebbins).  Envious of the vacation the family of his friends, Jack (Keegan-Michael Key) and Nancy (Regina Hall), had in Paris, Rusty decides to change his family’s annual trip to their cabin in Cheboygan, Michigan and instead drive cross country to Walley World, just as he had done years before with his parents and sister, Audrey Griswold (Leslie Mann) Chevy Chase (father) and Beverly De Angelo (mom) as seen in the original Vacation film.

Of course, using the basic plot techniques that Vacation 1.0 did, the family runs into many mishaps and “comic” stops along the way.  It is as if every conceivable joke was thrown at the wall, and the ones that seemed to stick best were swept up and glued together as the plotline.  I understand it is very difficult to follow such an iconic movie as Vacation 1.0, but they could have done a much better job.