RV -- 2006 -- PG

Wow, it's been a practically movie-less last week. Not sure what happened there.

RV is a family comedy involving an advertising guy who had planned a big vacation to Hawaii with his family until his boss tells him that he can't go, and now needs to give a presentation in Colorado. Not wanting to reveal the business trip but still wanting to take the vacation, he concocts an RV Trip to get them to Colorado and spend time with the family.

This is essentially a madcap type mis-adventure where the family tries to avoid each other, hate each other, and eventually bond before it's all over. The antics start a little stale but quickly escalate into downright amusing and funny. The poor RV (aka 'the rolling turd') gets tortured in the course of the movie losing its brakes early on for some silly (and plot-impacting) consequences further in.

The characters were drawn a bit thin with very little backstory and huge play on cliche character types. We have the rapping, weight-lifting little brother; the rebellious, "dad's a dork" teenage daughter who listens to hard rock; the stay at home mom who is spoiled; and the workaholic dad. While the cliches make it easy to make a connection to these people, the lack of originality makes the overall characters very unmemorable.

The moral message of the film is very easy to decipher, and in fact, I had it deciphered as soon as the plot was laid out. As soon as he announced the plan for the RV trip, I thought to myself, "If he just tells them what's going on, it'll make it all a lot easier for them to take." This message was delivered 60 minutes later. There was very little reasoning given for him not to reveal this beyond a slim mentioning that on the Hawaii vacation, he was not to work. If there had been some kind of whining and complaining about the working, it would have been a bit easier to take.

However, in the end, the movie was great fun, I laughed quite a bit, so the point of it being a comedy was well taken and a great success. The thin establishment of the main plot and forgettable characters hurts it a little bit, but the film is stil worth watching. It's very enjoyable which is really the point of movies anyway.