Vegas Vacation (1997)

It's vegas baby!
Awesome movie! Funny, very-well paced, charming. Overall
outstanding, even a nose better than X-mas vacation! "Why don't you just give me half of what you were going to bet, I'll take you outside, kick you in the nuts, and we'll call it a night!" The work they did on the soundtrack/sound editing on this movie is tremendous, it adds so much to the humor and atmosphere, outstanding work!

About "family pictures"
This is the first Vacation entry without John Hughes and sorely misses his creative spark. Several scenes have the characters remind us, (usually Chevy} "can't we do something nice as a family once more?" Nudity and profanity are controlled. Rocks, paper and scissors are played like kids do on a church youth group bus. Dino DeLorentis once said, "I made a family picture once. My family came to see it and everybody hated it." I am not against good family pictures. Make one because you really want one. But people having an unwanted family picture like this should consider an abortion.

This is WAY better than European Vacation
I don't understand how fans of the series insist that this is the worst one. For coming out eight years after the last installment, this movie is better than you'd expect. Unlike European Vacation, where without Chevy, the film would be unwatchable, here we have a great looking movie with likable stars that present an irresistable postcard for Las Vegas. Beverly D'Angelo is still quite lovely and the Griswold kids are likable and good looking, unlike the annoying, ugly kids that ruined European Vacation (no disrespect to Jason Lively and Dana Hill, but their characters were written rather shrill and irritating). Randy Quaid and crew aren't entirely necessary, but they don't hurt the film either. The only thing I could critique is Chevy himself. He's obviously aged since Christmas Vacation and seems a little uninterested. The ocassionally spotty screenplay has him doing silly things (like the whole Hoover Dam sequence) but he still assumes the role with comfort and command. It's good that they ended the series with this. They wrapped the series up with dignity intact.