If you grew up in the 80’s, chances are you saw at least one of National Lampoon’s “Vacation” flicks, if not all of them. The 1989 “Christmas Vacation” is the third of Lampoon’s installments. Once again it stars the Griswold family, you know, lain-brain Clark (Chevy Chase), his pretty and enduring wife Ellen (Beverly D’Angelo) and their two kids Audrey and Rusty (always played by new actors in each movie–in this one they are played by Juliette Lewis and Johnny Galecki).

The premise of this film does not revolve around a physical vacation, per se (unlike “Vacation” and “European Vacation”), but more the subject of it being Christmas, we need a tree, the relatives are coming to visit (stressful), Clark wants to don the entire house in Christmas lights (he can’t get them to work) and he’s anxious about his company bonus. Because he’s planning to use the money to put in a pool.

The grandparents have arrived (who wouldn’t be stressed with a mother played by Doris Roberts?) and to add to that Ellen’s crazy, steel-plated brain cousin Eddie (Randy Quaid) has taken it upon himself to arrive in his RV with his wife, two brats and a dog named Snots. Let the Christmas zaniness begin!

Between the shitter being full and Aunt Bethany and Uncle Lewis arriving with a leaky Jello mold and a wrapped up cat, it doesn’t get much more fun than that. Oh wait. Snots gets into the garbage, the cat bites the electrical cord, causing the tree to catch on fire and the tree Clark cuts down in the front yard to replace it has a squirrel in it. Then Clark gets his bonus–enrollment in the Jelly of the Month Club–and Eddie kidnaps Clark’s boss as revenge for the shitty bonus.

All’s well that ends well when Lewis tosses his stogie into the sewer causing an explosion and the Santa lawn ornament flies off into the night as Aunt Bethany sings “The Star Spangled Banner”. It doesn’t get much better than that.