Recently I have been to the cinema quite often, as you would expect, and I have seen the trailer for Vacation a number of times. The trailer made the movie look like a shockingly hideous “comedy” with jokes based on stupidity and awkwardness. Unfortunately, the trailer was an accurate reflection of the movie.

I understand that this is a continuation of previous Vacation movies, so many people went to see this with an idea of what they are about to watch. I have not seen the previous Vacation movies, so this review is based purely on the 2015 version I watched today. I hated it.

Scattered in dick jokes, revolting comedy and cringe worthy toilet humour, I am surprised how this movie even got a distributor to agree to show this in cinemas. There is a nine year old in this movie Kevin Griswold (Steele Stebbins) who says “f*ck” or “vagina” in almost every line he says, it wasn’t remotely funny, it was pathetic. In one scene the Griswold family swim in faeces, with one of the children throwing a syringe found in the lake as a dart into his Brother, it was just vile. How is this supposed to be funny? Rusty Griswold decided to hire a car with an excessive amount of buttons, while driving down the motorway his wife pressed one of the buttons making the driving seat swivel a full 360 degrees. Screams from all members of the family ensued; meanwhile I was sat in the cinema watching this thinking of all the better things I could be doing than watching this.

The unfortunate thing is that some really great actors decided to associate themselves with this movie. Rusty Griswold was played by Ed Helms, best known for his fantastic comedy appearances in ‘The Hangover’ movies, Rusty’s wife, Debbie Griswold, was played by Christina Applegate, who bought me to tears of laughter when starring in the “Anchorman” movies. The most surprising of all was Chris Hemsworth who played Stone Crandall and is the one and only “Thor” in the Marvel universe. I am amazed how actors at the peak of their careers, having been involved in such amazing movies would stoop so low as to appear in Vacation.

You may think I am being harsh, but really, it was that bad. A glimmer of hope did come when the nerdy and awkward James Griswold (Skyler Gisondo) met the attractive Adena (Catherine Missal). They started talking and I thought there might be a cute story here, with a James gaining his confidence and falling in love. It was looking good until James’ Dad, Rusty Griswold, came into the scene and ruined it all, pushing the movie back towards childish and vulgar humour with dick jokes.

Could this movie have ever been good? The cast was fantastic, so with a better script, they would have been able to really push this movie to success. Unfortunately, we were left with this pitiful excuse of a movie.