"Vegas Vacation" makes no pretenses to be a good, hearty, intelligent piece of cinema: it features many critical, inexcusable flaws, such as: trafficking in mindless frivolity, some occasionally cheesy dialogue, and even wavers constantly from scene to scene without any means of resolution or connection. Yet, if you can ignore its many irksome qualities, the latest outing with the Griswalds is simply an outrageous, hilarious, and pleasurable romp of a movie. If you laugh at something senseless and absurd, such as Cousing Eddie babbling on about his worthless, pathetic existence, or Clark Griswald finding himself at the edge of the Hoover Dam, or even a busload of tourists crashing into the estate of "Mr. Las Vegas", Wayne Newton, so what? Where logic and reasoning are scarce behind the odds of the scenarios the Griswalds encounter, laughs are aplenty to make this one gleeful, jovial outing full of some really effective comedy. The idea of the dysfunctional Griswalds venturing to Vegas for yet another "family vacation" and finding themselves experiencing the whims of the city of entertainment in their own individual ways, with Clark being a hapless, compulsive gambler, Ellen having somewhat of an affair with Wayne Newton, Rusty hitting it rich at the casinos and masquerading as a "playboy", and Audrey aspiring to be an exotic dancer, how hilarious can it get? Couple this with the outrageous imbecilic likes of Cousin Eddie continuing to plague Clark's existence, and "Vegas Vacation" succeeds in delivering a royal flush of laughs. If it's silly and inane, if scenarios are too illogical for words, and if not everything really comes together by the end, at least you have plenty of funny material to laugh away at, and that makes for a jolly good outing, when you find yourself laughing consistently throughout the film, which warrants a solid recommendation for "Vegas Vacation". Hilarious! *** out of ****
