What we really need is a movie about a goofy father who crams his bickering family into the car for a cross-country vacation. Along the way, they can have misadventures that fray everyone's nerves, but ultimately teach them the value of family. Oh wait, they've already made this movie—about four freakin' times!
Not content to let dormant franchise formulas die, director Christopher Erskin digs up the dregs of the National Lampoon's Vacation series, saddles it with racial stereotypes and vile characters and flogs the audience with failed attempts at humor for about 100 minutes. It feels much longer.
As buoyant family man Nate Johnson, Cedric the Entertainer manages a few laughs early on, mostly related to generational gaps between himself and his son (Bow Wow). The movie's best sequence involves a father-son rivalry about whose musical taste is more violent, but you've likely already seen that in the trailers or commercials.
Close-ups of Vanessa Williams' face aren't particularly flattering, but her character of Dorothy Johnson is downright ugly. She obviously finds her estranged husband repulsive, yet continually uses sex (or the promise of it, anyway) to manipulate him into doing whatever she wishes. Meant to be taken as clever feminine wiles, it simply comes across as malicious and deceitful.
The purpose of the trip is to attend the giant Johnson family reunion down South and compete in some silly exercises to win the coveted Family of the Year trophy, bestowed by Grandma Johnson. For a film about family values, the very concept of such a trophy is hideous, implying that the rest of the anonymous Johnson families are somehow lesser.
The entire movie is akin to being trapped in a car for several hours with a bunch of people you don't get along with. A sequence involving a native American reservation is particularly offensive. Mean-spirited people hurling insults at one another just isn't my idea of a good time.