National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

Before we move right to the anti-climatic number one Christmas movie of all-time, let us review the top 12:

• 12 - The Preacher's Wife
• 11 - The Family Man
• 10 - Scrooged
• 9 - How the Grinch Stole Christmas
• 8 - Elf
• 7 - Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
• 6 - It's a Wonderful Life
• 5 - Friday After Next
• 4 - Santa Claus is Coming to Town
• 3 - Bad(der) Santa
• 2 - A Charlie Brown Christmas

And #1 of all- time...

1 - National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

There may have been other Christmas catastrophe movies before this, but none of them were near as good.  As far as I'm concerned "Christmas Vacation" set the standard for all the other movies that would come along later and try to recreate what happens when everything goes wrong during the most wonderful time of the year.

"Christmas Vacation" was the second in a series of "Vacation" movies.  After the first one became an instant classic, I was skeptical that they could make another one just as funny.  They were able to pull it off, even though it definitely should have stopped with this one. Ironically, this may have been the last good movie Chevy Chase ever made.

We find food-additive genius Clark Griswold trying to entertain a house full of family to celebrate Christmas.  As if it wasn't bad enough that the folks AND the in-laws are all crammed under the same roof, crazy cousin Eddie shows up uninvited with his whole clan.  It still cracks me up to see Eddie walking around in the thin, skin-tight sweater with a black dickie underneath.

I also like it how they switched the kids out with every "Vacation" movie.  They didn't even try to make them look remotely similar.  Not only that, they had no regards for age either.  The Russell in "Christmas Vacation" was clearly younger than Anthony Michael Hall's version of him in the original.  It was the little things like that will keep you laughing.

For anyone that enjoys a good Christmas movie as well as a good comedy, "Christmas Vacation" fulfills both of those needs.  It's one of the rare Christmas movies that can be enjoyed all year round.