Metacritic reviews

National Lampoon’s Vacation is an enjoyable trip through familiar comedy landscapes.

National Lampoon's Vacation, which is more controlled than other Lampoon movies have been, is careful not to stray too far from its target. The result is a confident humor and throwaway style that helps sustain the laughs - of which there are quite a few.

While there are few huge laughs, the very lack of pushiness in Harold Ramis's direction comes as comic relief. [8 Aug 1983, p.55]

This is certainly Chase's most likable vehicle to date, and he endows Mr. Griswold with a sincere sort of goofiness. [29 July 1983, p.D1]

It's no masterpiece, but compared to the toothless comedies of its era, its attack on American mythology seems almost worthy of Preston Sturges.

The film is primarily an excuse for Chase to demonstrate that though he may be a movie star he has yet to learn how to create, let alone sustain, a character, and for director Harold (Caddyshack) Ramis and screenwriter John (National Lampoon's Class Reunion) Hughes to demonstrate that some movie stars get the colleagues they deserve. [2 Aug 1983]

Director Harold Ramis, star and co-writer of STRIPES (1981) and GHOST BUSTERS (1984), keeps this film moving and heightens the humor with his inclusion of comic cameos from a variety of actors.

Not so much a comedy about American values as a 2,500 mile skid on a banana skin. The visual gags come thick and fast, and are about as subtly signposted as the exit markers on a freeway. An exercise in the comedy of humiliation which is the stuff of shamefaced giggles.

There's hardly a shot in the film where Chase doesn't try to swallow the camera with one broad expression or another, and Vacation follows in turn, laboring too hard to drive every punchline home.

There are two, maybe three, good gags in National Lampoon's Vacation, which otherwise is poorly paced, sloppily put together, and full of inept, ill-conceived performances.