It’s about time that gentrifying black America got its version of the Griswold family vacation. “Johnson Family Vacation,” which opens today in advance of Easter weekend, steals every one of writer John Hughes’ road-trip tropes: the redneck hotels, the road-hogging truckers, the kitschy tourist traps, the shifty drifters — all the great flotsam of America’s interstate highways.
The journey heads in the reverse direction — from Los Angeles to the Midwest — but gets under way at the same venue as Chevy Chase’s first “Vacation”: the car dealership, where, inevitably, there’s a dreadful mix-up with the family roadster.
The station wagons of the ’80s are gone. This “Vacation” family properly drives a sport utility vehicle. When Cedric the Entertainer’s Nate Johnson arrives to pick up his Lincoln Navigator for a long trek to Missouri, though, he finds the big rig thugged out in custom rims and hydraulics and Burberry upholstery.
Nate’s rapper son D.J. (real-life rapper Bow Wow) thinks the loaded Lincoln is dope, but Nate himself, an old-school insurance-company man, finds it horrifying.
Unlike Mr. Chase’s Clark Griswold, Nate is a man whose marriage is on the rocks. Separated from his wife (former Miss America-turned-actress-and-singer Vanessa L. Williams), he has a plan to caravan the whole brood — the boys, plus Mom and two daughters (Beyonce’s younger sister Solange Knowles and Gabby Soleil) — and put on the happy, all-is-normal face at the Johnson family reunion.
Nate’s ultracompetitive brother, Max (comedian Steve Harvey), awaits, with his eye on the trophy for the annual family grudge match.
The premise is tired, but some of “Vacation’s” jokes seem fresh enough. Sparring with his son over hip-hop thuggery, Nate refuses to listen to CDs by “anyone who’s been shot” a la Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G.
D.J.’s clever comeback: The no-shooting standard would rule out Nate’s favorites, such as Sam Cooke and Marvin Gaye.
Even when you know the gags have been done before — didn’t Chevy Chase get caught frolicking in the motel pool, too? — Cedric seems to pull them off. He reserves some of the movie’s choicest humor for a second character, the ornery Uncle Earl.
The young Miss Knowles barely registers as the proverbial teen girl who’s itching for independence, and Miss Williams comes alive only for the Johnson ensemble’s musical number at the reunion’s talent competition.
First-time director Christopher Erskin offers little here to commend, and writer siblings Todd and Earl Jones apparently have added a chunk of their history into the hackneyed family-road-trip formula.
“Johnson Family Vacation” rides on the backs of Cedric the Entertainer’s and Steve Harvey’s raw talent. Still, they could have applied that talent to any old rehash and achieved a similar result.
“Johnson Family Vacation” is what they’re serving up. By default, it’s not half bad.
**
TITLE: “Johnson Family Vacation”
RATING: PG-13 (Crude humor, sexual suggestiveness, drug reference)
CREDITS: Directed by Christopher Erskin. Produced by Cedric the Entertainer, Paul Hall, Wendy Park and Eric Rhone. Written by Todd R. Jones and Earl Richey Jones. Cinematography by Shawn Maurer.
RUNNING TIME: 104 minutes.
WEB SITE: www.foxsearchlight.com/jfv
MAXIMUM RATING: FOUR STARS
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