National Lampoon’s European Vacation arrived on Home Video today in 1986, after a July 26th, 1985 theatrical release.
Sure, there’s a familiarity about European Vacation. The way Clark Griswold perpetually tries to wring meaning out of every moment of the trip, the kids constantly rolling their eyes, Ellen humouring him and trying to keep the peace, the fact that everything that can go wrong, does. But there’s a even deeper truth that resonates for anyone who’s ever been the reluctant passenger on a family vacation.
Because the thing is, we’ve all been there. In some way or another. Dragged across strange cities, forced to stand in front of monuments we didn’t care about, or shuffled through museums when all we wanted to do was eat street food and keep our faces buried in a GameBoy. Holidays that seemed like endurance tests rather than adventures, orchestrated by parents hell-bent on “broadening our horizons” or “making memories” whether we wanted them or not.
We complained, we sulked, we did everything we could to ruin it out of sheer boredom or adolescent spite. But looking back, those trips – the ones we thought were too lame, too long, or just too much – are now some of the stories we tell the most.
It’s easy to see now that those vacations were never really about the landmarks or the museums or even the destinations. They were about the stories. Stories that turned into running jokes, evolving with each retelling around the Christmas dinner table until the truth was almost an afterthought.
You look back and realise that your parents weren’t dragging you through boring tours – they were giving you a head start on a lifetime of anecdotes. They were giving you a shared language of memories, little snapshots of absurdity and love wrapped up in goofy grins and dad jokes.
For me, European Vacation isn’t just about Chevy’s goofy misadventures across the continent, it puts me in this weirdly nostalgic headspace. Yeah, I’ve always loved its sketchy half-baked travelogue shenanigans, heck I probably think about it more than the original. It reminds me that no matter how much I grumbled, rolled my eyes, or flat-out rebelled, those days got stitched into who I am. And I wouldn’t trade those memories for the world.