RV
is the kind of movie you want your family to see. There's no way
in hell you'll go with them, but it's a perfect opportunity to
go through their stuff, steal loose change and read their private
correspondence. The movie's the perfect length for doing that
sort of stuff, and that's something, right? Unless you're family
is like my Mrs. Filthy who has several shoeboxes stuffed with
mimeographed letters to Dear Abby and Ann Landers about my behavior
and compulsions. I couldn't get through them all during two hours,
but the box labeled "Drinking 1998-2002" was a fantastic trip
down memory lane. Did you know I once drank from a cement mixer,
and my eyes seeped sandy tears for a week? I don't remember that
happening, but I guess I did. And my wife was concerned enough
to write a letter about it. God damn, she's an angel sent straight
from heaven. I bet Abby never answered, though. That crotchety
old hag. Telling some weepy, cuckolded husband to get counseling
is more important.
So,
that's the single redeeming quality of the otherwise shitacular
RV; the people who don't go can stay home and rifle through
those who do stuff. Seriously, they deserve it for going to see
this unimaginative, joyless crap. Hell, there is better unimaginative,
joyless crap in the john at the Elk Lodge after a pancake breakfast.
And it's free! Honestly, you don't even have to buy the pancakes
or the tarry, black pancakes. You can just walk in, sort of saunter
back toward the bathrooms, go in and look. They have never charged
me anything.
Robin
Williams takes another tumble down the career staircase in RV.
He had already descended to the landing between ground level and
the basement after playing a retarded janitor in House of D.
Now he trips the rest of the way, landing face first in the root
cellar, head cracked open and teeth smashed to hell. Figuratively,
I mean. Not literally. Literally, that happened to the Harelip
last week, which is why the imagery is fresh in my mind. She came
directly from her fall to the Tavern and started talking with
her mouth full of foamy Budweiser and blood.
In
, Williams is a middle-aged marketing executive afraid that
some young gun will steal his job. At home, his teen kids are
indifferent to him, and his work stress has made him unpleasant
and harried. Well, more unpleasant. To please his smarmy, unpleasant,
evil boss, he agrees to do a presentation in Colorado during a
time he'd already committed to a long overdue Hawaiian family
vacation.
After
renting a massive motor home, Williams tells his family they need
to spend more together time, and that he has decided on an RV
vacation instead of Hawaii. Naturally, the family hates the idea.
And naturally, Williams takes out trees, bricks and awnings with
the motor home. And then there are the running gags about shit
in the RVs tank and, strangely, a seatbelt that locks up. Even
more bizarre is a scene where he calls a man named "Irv " by the
name "Saul." I have no idea what the punchline is there, or whether
it was a running gag so fucking bad they edited most of it out.
I doubt that theory, though, because the gags they left in are
so fucking rancid that there's no lower limit to what they'd keep.
who knows? Maybe there's a scene of a child being raped in a gas
station bathroom they decided wasn't quite right. But I bet that
was a tough call.
Along
the way to Colorado, Williams and family encounter such hilarity
as one other wacky motor-homing family, difficulty connecting
to the Internet, and faulty brakes that mean that any time things
get slow the motor home rolls down a hill. He also reconnects
with his whiny son and daughter, and with his completely nondescript
wife. More importantly, by reconnecting he learns that working
for an evil boss is bad, and he gives a rousing speech in Colorado
declaring that he quits and that he rediscovered his soul, etc,
etc.
What
a fucking crock of shit. RV is so damn formulaic they might
as well feed it to babies. Hell, it's already lukewarm. It's the
same fucking story of the dissatisfied suburban dad who must go
on a journey to discover himself and that his family is what really
matters. Does anyone know a dad who this really happened to? Yeah,
some might change for a little while, but total transformation?
I remember Worm down at the Tavern vowed to learn all his kids'
names after he broke his dick and got arrested for humping a fire
hydrant. He did, too, for the brats from his first two wives.
Two weeks later, though, he was back to humping fire hydrants
and calling his kids shitstains. This life-changing journey stuff
is generally bullshit, but in the hands of Hollywood hacks like
Geoff Rodkey and Barry Sonnenfeld, it's worse. It's pureed bullshit:
same awful taste, just more processed. Like something with wheatgrass
in it from Jamba Juice. Rodkey is the ultimate in unimaginative
grassfuckers; he also wrote The Shaggy Dog, which is the
same God damn story of an overworked dad rediscovering his estranged
kids through hardship. They both even have the same heavy reliance
on corny sight gags. In Dog it was talking animals. Here
it's shit getting run over by the runaway motor home, over and
over and over. You've gotta have the imagination of an asswart
to rely so heavily on such lame-ass gags. Or on the sort of emotion
and resolutions that come in Hallmark cards. Seriously, it takes
no effort and no creativity to wrap up this shit with solutions
like Williams quitting his job because his kids taught him to
believe in himself, only to immediately be given a better job
by people who respect his newly found integrity.
The
movie is as toothless as the keynote speaker at an American Legion
Convention. It tries to be nice to everyone, and it isn't clever
enough to make anyone unique. Basically, we're stuck with a bunch
of bland people doing shit we've seen before, except in a motor
home. In other words, like camping with my parents.
I
wouldn't pay ten bucks to do that, and you shouldn't pay ten to
do this. One Finger for RV. I wish I could call
it a new low for weak-ass formula story-telling, but it's not.
It's right down there with the rest of them, looking up at our
asses and picking our pockets.
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