Vegas Vacation (1997)

Vegas Vacation arrives as the fourth installment in a franchise that had already worn out its welcome, and it does so without the guiding hand of John Hughes, who by all accounts learned of its existence by reading a trade magazine. The Griswolds go to Las Vegas. Clark loses the family's money to roulette and keno. Rusty acquires a fake ID and a fleet of automobiles. Audrey takes a job as a go-go dancer. Eddie lives in the desert on a former hydrogen bomb test site. This is the entire architecture of the thing, and it holds together about as well as a Hoover Dam tour gone wrong.

The film's single nod toward the modern cultural ledger is the casting of Marisol Nichols as Audrey, an actress of Latina heritage stepping into a role played previously by four white women. The movie says nothing about it. Neither does anyone else. Beyond that, the picture is a time capsule of 1997 appetites: showgirls as scenery, Wayne Newton as a romantic obstacle, a wife who exists to be embarrassed by her husband. No character wrestles with identity, no system is interrogated, no environment is mourned. The gambling is a foible. The money is a prop. The women are set dressing.

What remains is a comedy with no agenda except the reconciliation of a family that keeps mistaking proximity for connection. The lone moral, delivered without sermon or soapbox, is that Clark should love his people instead of his winnings. Rusty's luck buys the ride home. The lonely old man in the keno chair leaves them the ticket. It is a small, tired, harmless thing, and it asks nothing of the audience but a shrug.