This used 'RV' is a lame vehicle

BY KEVIN CRUST | LOS ANGELES TIMES

April 28, 2006

That noxious odor emitting from the comedy "RV," as it barrels down the highway on its way to home video, is desperation. A barely concealed rip-off of "National Lampoon's Vacation," this Barry Sonnenfeld-directed, Robin Williams-starring misfire spits out one failed gag after another as it tries to disguise its lack of originality.

The movie opens with Williams' Bob Munro amusing his young daughter, Cassie, with a sock puppet called the tickle monster. Williams breaks into a familiar Sylvester Stallone impersonation that delights the girl but sends a clear distress signal to the audience. Cassie then tells her father that she never wants to get married because she always wants to live with him. Uh-oh. We've seen recycled Robin and schmaltzy Robin and it's only five minutes into the film.

The movie fast-forwards to the present, where high-schooler Cassie (teen pop star Joanna "JoJo" Levesque) loathes Bob. His job as an executive at a soda pop conglomerate keeps the family - which includes his wife, Jamie (Cheryl Hines), and son, Carl (Josh Hutcherson) - in a cushy Pasadena, Calif., lifestyle. But between their laptops, BlackBerries and cell phones, they barely acknowledge one another's existence.

A family vacation to Hawaii is meant to change all that, until Bob is given an ultimatum by his unctuous boss (Will Arnett). Bob must write up a proposal and deliver it in Colorado by the end of the week or lose his job. So Bob impulsively rents the ugliest recreational vehicle on the face of the earth and launches a hare-brained plan to furtively do his work while the family motors across the western United States. Jamie, Cassie and Carl are less than enthused about the change of plans, but before you can sing a few bars of "Holiday Road," the Munros set out to be the Griswolds of the 21st century.

Predictable misadventures ensue with less Williams shtick than one might imagine and more of the kind of broad pratfall humor that gave Chevy Chase so much back pain. Geoff Rodkey's screenplay drags out the expected destruction of the RV in predictable ways. The main dramatic tension, aside from the fact that the Munros don't like one another much, comes from Bob's having concealed his true reason for the trip.

The only people in the film who appear to be having any fun are Jeff Daniels and Kristen Chenoweth as Travis and Mary Jo Gornicke, whose preternaturally perky family RVs full-time and befriends the hapless Munros. As laborious as it is to watch Williams wrestle with an uncooperative seat-belt, it's even more grueling to see him play straight-man and whipping boy to everyone else in the film. Robin Williams in a repressive role is not a pretty sight.