Monday, November 2, 2015

The Great Outdoors (1988)

Director: Howard Deutch

Writer: John Hughes

Composer: Thomas Newman

Starring: Dan Aykroyd, John Candy, Stephanie Faracy, Annette Bening, Chris Young, Ian Giatti, Hilary Gordon, Rebecca Gordon, Robert Prosky, Zoaunne LeRoy, Bart the Bear

More info: IMDb

Tagline: A week in the woods with Roman and Chet: This is no holiday...this is war!

Plot: A Chicago man's hope for a peaceful family vacation in the woods is shattered when the annoying in-laws drop in.



My rating: 5/10

Will I watch it again? No.

Despite being written by John Hughes, who's done MUCH better than this, this is about as predictable and dumb as it looks.  I'm a huge fan of Candy and Aykroyd and I can't even recommend this to fans of either of these two.  They do the best they can I guess but it's the kind of easy paycheck that these two could perform in their sleep.  I did like the chemistry between Candy and Faracy, who plays his on-screen wife.  Outside of that, I didn't laugh once. Some scenes went on too long (like Chet's (Candy) telling of the bear story) and it felt like a string of gag set pieces that were bland or didn't work at all.  It's below average for everyone involved, dumb and uninteresting.  The Universal DVD has a non-anamorphic widescreen print and a fullscreen trailer, the sole extra on the disc despite the menu saying "Theatrical Trailers".

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