As far as doomed family-vacation comedies went, I was forever torch as a young moviegoer between Chevy Chase in National Lampoon’s Vacation and John Candy in this 1985 flick, which tells pretty much the same plot (harried family man does his best to make sure his clan has a good time, with often disastrous results). If I lean more towards Candy here, it’s because he actually seemed like the benevolent guy he played, as opposed to Chevy, who had this sarcastic hipster thing going (sort of an I’m-too-cool-to- -play-a-nice-family-without-irony humor that is in itself quite funny). Anyhoo, the big guy plays a stressed-out air traffic controller who’s given some time off and decides to take the missus and the kids down to the beach. Of course, very little goes right. They move into the wrong condo (the right one at one point finds itself filled with beach bums), Dad falls asleep while sunbathing and wakes up red as a lobster, and then there’s the movie’s resident a-hole, a rich, obnoxious yachtsman played by Richard Crenna. It’s more of a “nice” comedy than a hilarious one (director Carl Reiner is usually quicker and raunchier), and formulaic as hell. On the plus side, there’s Rip Torn as a salty dog who runs a restaurant dressed like a pirate, kind of like the old captain from The Simpsons. Come to think of it, this often seems like a live-action episode of the show, with Candy particularly dandy as Homer Simpson.