Vegas Vacation (1997)

'Vegas Vacation' is decent fare for this franchise, I think I just about enjoyed it. It does go through peaks and troughs, there are some uninteresting moments but by and large what I was viewing was passable entertainment. The Vegas setting and shenanigans keep it watchable, the dam scenes are good too. Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo are back yet again, as is Randy Quaid. I still don't really rate the latter's character all that much, pretty annoying in fact (and not in the intended sense); Chase's Clark is supposed to be the idiot here, so always feels odd to have an even bigger idiot. The more sentimental conclusion doesn't totally land, at least in terms of how it's portrayed. It felt watching that it was attempting to be super sensitive about family and love for each other, but these aren't the sort of movies where that fits. The Griswolds are dysfunctional, not lovable or relatable. Still, this is better than I thought it was going to be; especially with the disappearance of the National Lampoon name and the eight-year gap from the previous entry.