Overrated and really quite awful.

Rating: 2/10 (30 January 2015)

This movie was a MAJOR disappointment for me as it features so many gifted comic actors whom I otherwise love.
But the premise of this movie is so beyond belief that it's nearly unwatchable. Great comedy has to have some connection to reality. Yet time and again, this movie fails miserably in that respect by presenting situations and behaviors that are beyond belief.
I'll give you one example: a couple of times in the movie, the travelers need to get out and push-start their VW van. Their very young daughter participates in this ritual, which is seen a couple of times. Once the van gets going, the "pushers" need to run alongside the van and jump in as it gains speed.
Now ask yourself: 1. just how much help would a pre-teen child be in physically push-starting a van?, and 2. what family with ANY semblance of responsibility would have a child do such a thing? I'd think that roughly 100% of families would realize that the little girl's physical efforts add NOTHING to getting the van started while risking danger to her life by having her jump into a moving van.
Of course, the director sees this staged scene as distilling the essence of the flick, even using a still from one of these scenes as the promotional icon for the film.
And so goes the rest of this flick, with similar caricatures of human behavior littering the screen.
Worse, the movie is incredibly predictable. It's just a matter of in what order which unbelievable behavior will occur.
Just awful.