In six weeks, I’ll be turning 40. A big ol’ milestone birthday! And earlier this year, I had this idea for doing a whole blog series about a few things I was hoping/planning on doing leading up to that milestone. But if you’re at all familiar with me and plans for blog series, that kind of…didn’t happen. Cut to the beginning of the summer, and I was like, I know I’ll do a blog series on the top movies of the summer of 1983!, but since I’m a procrastinator to the core, the summer’s now half over and I haven’t written a thing. SO, now, at last, I’ve settled on a theme for this ‘I’m almost 40’ blog series: the top 10 grossing movies for the year I was born. ‘Cause you know I love a movie, and it seems as good a theme as any, lol.

So, a quick Google search gave me the list, and I decided to work in reverse order, starting with #10, National Lampoon’s Vacation.
Released: June 29, 1983
Gross: $61,399,522
Have I seen this movie before? Nope

So, for those of you, like me, who may not have watched Vacation before, the rough synopsis is that Chevy Chase wants to take his family on a cross-country road trip from Chicago to California so they can visit Walley World. Hijinks ensue. Pretty standard family road trip flick.

My friends, this is not a good movie. I can maybe understand if you saw it when you were young how you might have some rose-coloured nostalgia for it, but I do not and I did not like this movie. I found it cringy and unfunny from pretty much beginning to end. Okay, there was a moment, right at the top, when Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) takes his totally fine car to get a new one THE DAY BEFORE EMBARKING ON A ROAD TRIP and Eugene Levy makes a fun appearance. One thing leads to another and they get a much crappier car, which prompts his wife Ellen to ask why they don’t just fly? Good question Ellen! Apparently, Clark’s been working so much that he misses spending time with his kids, which is sweet in a way, but wouldn’t be nice to spend more time at Wallyworld with them than being stuck in a car with them? Also, if this is an important family trip why does Clark spend so much time obsessing over Christie Brinkley as she drives sexily past him on the highway? I get it, for the ‘comedy’ of it all, except it’s not funny. There are a bunch of things that just don’t work out for the Griswold’s on their roadtrip, but the real topper is when Ellen’s aunt dies in the car and then Clark insists on LEAVING HER BODY IN THE RAIN OUTSIDE ELLEN’S BROTHERS’ HOUSE. Like, what?!?! This is after they strap her corpse to the top of the car, OF COURSE.

All of this was in service of getting to Walley World, right? But guess what folks, in the middle of the summer, Walley World is closed for maintenance, the whole park, for two weeks! It seems outright nonsensical in the first place, but even more bonkers is that this whole family would plan a trip there and not even make sure the park would be open when they arrived! I understand that this was in a pre-internet time, but I went to Disneyland in the mid-90s and my parents definitely checked it would be open before schlepping four kids down to California for a week and we didn’t get the (dial-up) internet until around ‘97-’98…

I suppose the only bonus is there’s another fun Canadian comedy legend cameo in the form of John Candy as the SOLE guard working at Walley World when Clark Griswold loses his mind and decides to break into a theme park so his family can ‘have fun’? And then it all works out ‘cause Mr. Walley also has a family he doesn’t spend enough time with?

Truly a baffling film folks.

Pros: John Candy, Eugene Levy, and Jane Krakowski (she’s a Griswold cousin, already super sassy as a teen), and Lindsay Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac wrote a couple songs for it

Cons: Literally everything else.