Load up the car, and gather the kids, we're going on a road trip! Perhaps the quintissential summer family activity is a driving vacation, but after watching Johnson Family Vacation, it's enough to make us want to stay home. It features Cedric the Entertainer (in no less than two roles), and Vanessa Williams.Cedric plays Nate Johnson, the middle aged father who is in a falling apart marriage. Of his three kids, at least the youngest adores him, as the two teenagers have no use for him. He decides to take a road trip, in a new tricked out Lincoln Navigator from Los Angeles to Missouri for a family reunion which includes his mother, and an ultracompetitive older brother. Along the way, we have the predictable wrong turns, motel issues, sickening road food, yelling at the GPS, hitchhiker that they should have left at the side of the road, and run in with the police, and some American Indians. You know, just like every other summer vacation/roadtrip movie seems to have these days.
It's not that it's not humorous, but it's that this has all been done plenty of times before. If you've seen RV, Are We There Yet?, or National Lampoon's Vacation than you've pretty much seen most of the Johnson Family Vacation. It's too bad that much of the humor is so formulaic, as there are plenty of new directions that we could of gone in here. Unfortunately for this film, the three films that I mentioned above were all better than it. Still, for a mindless armchair vacation, or a reminder why you're staying home with your next block of time off, Johnson family Vacation does provide some diversion.Overall Grade: B-
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