The Great Outdoors (1988)

(On TV, April 2019) When I say that The Great Outdoors is about taking a trip, it’s not necessarily in the way reflected by the plot of the film. Yes, sure, it’s superficially about two brothers and their families spending a week at a lake cabin, and the various tensions between the brothers playing themselves out. But in more significant ways to twenty-first century viewers, The Great Outdoors is a trip back in time, to an era with a very specific aesthetic when it comes to dumb comedies. Written by John Hughes, directed by Howard Deutch, starring John Candy and Dan Aykroyd, you can clearly associate the film with the mainstream of mid-to-late-1980s American comedies. For anyone on a steady diet of more modern films, it’s a different experience watching a dumb 1980s comedy, with its painfully obvious plotting, shot dumb gags and abandoned emotional arcs. (I’m not saying modern movies are smarter—but the stylistic conventions are different.)  But dumb 1980s films can be reasonably fun, so if you can tolerate the expected gags and predictable third-act plot developments, the end result isn’t too bad—especially considering how The Great Outdoors does a lot of mileage on Candy and Aykroyd’s pure comic talents, with Candy as a goofy dad and Aykroyd as a fast-talking urbanite. (Meanwhile, Annette Bening’s screen debut here is probably an early shame considering her later body of work.)  There are a few things I really liked—notably the use of “Yakety Yak” at the beginning of the film, and the very funny scenes featuring subtitled raccoon talk. The Great Outdoors is not a great film, but it does have an amiable quality to it: if nothing else, it’s not mean-spirited at all in showing some heartwarming family moments.