National Lampoon's European Vacation - 4 stars out of 10

National Lampoon's European Vacation - 4 stars out of 10

"National Lampoon's European Vacation" has some of the most classic moments of the series, but as a whole it is not their finest effort.  The writers had a lot of humorous scenarios but simply did not tie them together well.  The "Pig in a Poke" is a great running gag, then of course you have "Big Ben, Parliament." and Stonehenge, meeting the wrong family in Germany and mistaking the German dancing for fighting, and best of all, the contrast between British people being unreasonbly nice and French people being stereotypically mean.  In concept, the film should be a success but the execution missed its mark.  Many of the scenes (even some of the funny ones) tend to drag on.  There were way too many shopping montages (and by too many, I mean the one that was in there).  The hotel sequences were unnecessarily long, and so was any scene involving Audrey being upset about her boyfriend.  I understand that, even with all of the dragging on, the film was only 90 minutes.  But that means that they needed another good parallel storyline instead of a bunch of drawn-out sequences that are searching for a plot.  I like Rusty's search for a European girl, I thought that the entire plot of the theif was clever and underemphasized, and the greatest part of the entire film is Eric Idle (from "Monty Python") as the mangled bike rider that keeps appearing throughout the film.  This film is good for a few laughs (as you can always expect with Chevy Chase), particularly if you have been to these places in Europe, but I wouldn't attentively watching this film if you're looking for a solid plot or interesting character development.