National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie’s Island Adventure
DIRECTOR: Nick Marck CAST: Randy Quaid, Miriam Flynn, Dana Barron
The end of 2019 is truly cause for celebration–not just because of the Christmas holiday, but also because of the 30th anniversary of the perennial holiday favorite NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION, and Awfully Good Movies is celebrating the Griswold Family’s festive misadventures by revisiting a thankfully forgotten follow-up in the VACATION series…NATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION 2: COUSIN EDDIE’S ISLAND ADVENTURE! This second CHRISTMAS VACATION sees none other than Clark Griswold’s redneck cousin-in-law Eddie Johnson, as played for the final time by Randy Quaid before he officially separated from sanity, trying to give his family a memorable holiday getaway without the help of his cousin Clark this time, after he loses his latest nuclear testing job to a chimpanzee and his former employers pay him back with a flight to an island in the South Pacific. Not to worry, though, because in addition to Miriam Flynn returning as Eddie’s long-suffering wife Catherine, we also have one other member of the Griswolds returning to join Cousin Eddie: Audrey Griswold, as played once again by Dana Barron for the first time since the original 1983 VACATION, along with the legendary Ed Asner grouching it up as Eddie’s newly single Uncle Nick. But sadly, since John Hughes had more or less retired from the screenwriting game by this point, it’s now up to Matty Simmons, the producer of the VACATION series, to write the script this time around, despite being known as the editor-in-chief who ended up sinking the National Lampoon brand after taking over the magazine, and while it’s fair not to expect much from a CHRISTMAS VACATION sequel airing on NBC, COUSIN EDDIE’S ISLAND ADVENTURE manages to sink below its already low expectations to become the worst thing to hit the television airwaves in 2003 since the start of the Iraq War…oh yeah, I’m going there. With the Johnson Family crashing their boat at sea and having to survive on a nearby desert island, the movie begins to lose any semblance of Christmas spirit as it strives desperately for laughs that will never come. Randy Quaid tries mugging for the camera, Snots the Dog lets off a fart or two, Ed Asner leers creepily at the native tour guide while swigging down bourbon, and Eric Idle even comes in to reprise his role as the accident-prone Englishman from nobody’s favorite movie in this franchise EUROPEAN VACATION. But where the first CHRISTMAS VACATION will continue to be remembered as a cynical yet heartfelt parody of the stress that comes with Christmas family gatherings, CHRISTMAS VACATION 2 will be quickly forgotten by everyone as one of the saddest and cheapest cashgrabs in cinema history without any likable characters, memorable gags, or year-long subscriptions to the Jelly of the Month Club. Hallelujah, holy shit, and screw the Tylenol–to get through this movie, you’re gonna need to wash down some painkillers with a little help from Jack Daniels. Now here’s hoping the 2020s will have far less Randy Quaid getting bit on the ass by a chimpanzee…MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ONE AND ALL!
While you try choking down your dry Christmas turkey and Jell-O strewn with cat treats, make sure to feast on some Awfully Good Movies episodes of Christmas past…
HOME ALONE 4: TAKING BACK THE HOUSE
THE SANTA CLAUSE 3: THE ESCAPE CLAUSE