HOLIDAY MAGIC: National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

HOLIDAY MAGIC: National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

We were busy having the hap-hap-happiest Christmas, but we’re back with this final Christmas classic!

There’s one thing that’s undeniable about the Vacation film series - Chevy Chase is a genius. I mean, he’s a horrible human being, but dammit he’s funny. He makes the absolute dumbest jokes somehow make perfect sense and makes every scene he’s in better. Which is what makes Christmas Vacation somewhat disappointing - John Hughes is back with his twisted vision of It’s a Wonderful Life, and the Griswold extended family is packed with great actors, young and old. But the final product is just not up to snuff. Maybe hiring an unproven music video director in 1989 wasn’t quite the right idea. Fans of this movie have to be fans of Vacation - otherwise, this movie doesn’t leave much to be desired. Still, it’s a Christmas classic, and we’re glad to round out our holiday series with National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation!

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Intro music taken from the Second Movement of Ludwig von Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Hong Kong (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 HK) license. To hear the full performance or get more information, visit the song page at the Internet Archive.

Jingle bells effect taken from “Jingle bells.wav” created by user ‘juskiddink’ on the Freesound platform. Licensed under an Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) license. To get additional information or download the sound, visit Freesound.

BONUS: New Movies in December

BONUS: New Movies in December

HOLIDAY MAGIC: Krampus (2015)

HOLIDAY MAGIC: Krampus (2015)