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RV (2006)

Director: Barry Sonnenfeld

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From Time Out London

In the US, RV means ‘recreational vehicle’, which we’d translate as ‘motorhome’, because that’s where hassled exec Robin Williams insists his family spend their holidays, having cancelled their trip to Hawaii. Rolling through the great outdoors, bickering as they go, what the wife and kids don’t know is that all this is part of dad’s stealth plan to make an important business meeting in Colorado.

The audience is supposed to be sympathetic because the poor schmuck’s desperately trying to maintain their comfortable lifestyle, yet bourgeois anxiety here plays an essentially supporting role to routine slapstick. The blocked toilet pump, the handbrake that doesn’t work, all the usual suspects. What are the likes of once-hip director Barry Sonnenfeld and an increasingly crinkly Williams doing in a virtual remake of ‘National Lampoon’s Vacation’ (minus the cruel granny action)? Merely ticking over in the hope their careers hit an upturn, one imagines. Actually, it’s not unbearably terrible, just thoroughly mediocre, and the truly heroic Jeff Daniels warrants a smile as the dauntingly cheery hick paterfamilias encountered on the road.

Author: Trevor Johnston 2006-06-06 10:58:52

Time Out London Issue 1868: June 7-14 2006