National Lampoon’s European Vacation arrived on Home Video this week in 1986, after a July 26th, 1985 theatrical release.
The French are snooty. The English are incomprehensible. The Germans are, well, very German. Every country is boiled down to its most recognisable clichés, and the Griswolds barrel through all of it with the cheerful obliviousness of people who genuinely believe enthusiasm is the universal language.
Yeah, European Vacation carries a lot of baggage, but it’s very much a reflection of how Americans imagined the world saw them.
Clark topples Stonehenge, gets stuck on a roundabout for hours, butchers the French language while his waiter insults him to his face, and none of it comes off as anything worse than a series of adorable looney mishaps. The locals are baffled, mildly inconvenienced, and occasionally charmed, but the Griswolds are never the problem, and everyone just seems happy for some free entertainment.
But for anyone who’s actually travelled abroad, or talked to Europeans about American tourists, this movie minds the gap between that fantasy and reality.
The Griswolds are loud, oblivious, and everywhere. But the film never really goes there, and it certainly never lets Clark or the audience contemplate the possibility that good intentions don’t automatically make you welcome.
That’s some very 80s hutzpah right there, the unexaminable belief that the world is basically your theme park.
I think about this one more than the original, honestly. Maybe more than I should.
There’s something cosy about the Griswolds’ cartoony refusal to let reality interfere with their idea of a perfect family trip, and there’s something nostalgic about a version of international travel where the biggest danger was a stolen camcorder and a snooty maître d’.
It’s a movie I can’t help but enjoy, even knowing it probably set US-European tourism relations back about a decade. -Pop