I struggle for the words to describe this movie. Sure, it's a TV movie, but that's no excuse.
National Lampoon has been a comedy heavyweight for 30 years. Animal House launched the film careers of John Belushi and director John Landis, and 25 years later it remains the definitive campus comedy. Lampoon kept rolling with the Vacation movies, inexplicably making Chevy Chase the fifth biggest movie star in the world by the mid-1980s. The '90s were tough years (Senior Trip, anyone? Or The Don's Analyst?), but today National Lampoon survives with a popular Web site and a college TV network seen across the country. MTSU does not have this network, but judging from this latest effort, that might be a good thing.
Thanksgiving Reunion. Well, a reunion is sort of like a vacation, right? And Thanksgiving is sort of like Christmas, I guess. Anyway, I've dragged my feet long enough. It's time to look at the movie.
Judge Reinhold stars as Mitch, a rich L.A. anesthesiologist ("The man who puts Hollywood to sleep," according to a magazine article about him). His wife does nothing but spend money, his teenage daughter is a snob, and his son is a hypochondriac. Thanksgiving is coming up and poor Mitch, cut from the same wholesome cloth as Vacation's Clark Griswold, just wants to spend a quiet holiday with his family. Mitch gets a letter in the mail from his long-lost cousin Woodrow (Bryan Cranston from Malcolm in the Middle), inviting him up to Idaho for Thanksgiving, so he packs his family into their SUV and heads out into the country. But Woodrow and his wife (Penelope Ann Miller) are crazy hippies, their kids are psychotic and hilarity ensues.
OK, hilarity does not ensue. Nothing resembling hilarity ever comes close to ensuing. This is the least funny comedy I have seen in a very long time, and the worst part is that the movie tries so hard. There's Uncle Phil, a flatulent old man not related to anyone, but is included in the trip to Idaho in order to make geriatric sex jokes later on. There are two homoerotic incest scenes, when Mitch takes a shower only to find that Woodrow is in there with him, and a brief mud wrestling scene between Mitch and Woodrow's teenage daughters. There's also Woodrow's dog Yoko, who takes a particular liking to Mitch, prompting nauseating cries of "Yoko! Oh, no!" throughout the picture. Woodrow and his wife act so bizarrely at times one wonders if they are mentally retarded.
Bryan Cranston is the funniest non-animated dad on television, Penelope Ann Miller is a vastly underrated actress and who doesn't like Judge Reinhold? Seeing them suffer through this movie is confusing and sad. The director is Neal Israel, creator of the dreadful Police Academy movies, and I can afford no sympathy to him.
National Lampoon's Thanksgiving Reunion airs Nov. 23 at 7 p.m. on TBS, and if there is anything else on TV, for God's sake, watch that.
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