Pop culture -- a history and an oddity

WHERE FUNNY GOT ITS START

Popular culture seems constantly engaged moments of self-veneration, some of worthless activities and others of worthy phenomenon. Director Douglas Tirola's documentary, Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead, tilts toward the worthy end of the spectrum as it chronicles the brief history and pop cultural influences of National Lampoon magazine. For me, the best part of this look at a magazine whose satiric irreverence still reverberates throughout the movie world involves seeing some of the people who became part of Lampoon family in their younger days, notably Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, John Belushi and Gilda Radner. But Tirola rightly spends more time with Doug Kenney, Henry Beard and Bob Hoffman, the comic minds who were instrumental in launching the magazine. Businessman Matty Simmons gets his share of the limelight: He helped create the Lampoon commercial empire, if that's not too grandiose a term for for the magazine's various spinoffs. Lasting from 1970 to 1988. National Lampoon, of course, became best known for a single cover, a photo of dog with a revolver pointed at its head. The caption: "If You Don't Buy This Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog".

SHAMELESS, CREATIVE, VIOLENT AND SILLY

Japanese director Takashi Miike (Audition, 13 Assassins and Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai) strikes again with Yakuza Apocalypse, a movie that almost can't be separated from the word "midnight" -- as in "midnight movie." The term generally applies to films that refuse to be tamed either by convention or taste. This time, Miike gives us a movie featuring Yakuza vampires. Not enough? Add sword fights and a giant green creature who shows up late in the proceedings to trample the Earth; it looks like a cheesy Muppets ripoff blown-up to the size of a building. Yakuza Apocalypse is amusing for its sheer gall and for the way it throws many genres into Miike's Cuisinart without apparent concern for where the blood will splatter. Yakuza Apocalypse plays like a stream of consciousness movie in which the characters are caught in Miike's crazy flow. Yakuza Apocalypse may not be Miike's best, but it's willing to try just about anything in its pursuit of the occasionally repulsive and, more important, the outrageously nonsensical.

No funny rest stops in this 'Vacation'

A dud of an attempt to revive a franchise.

If you're looking for a break from stupid comedy, Vacation isn't likely to fill the bill. This lame attempt to revive a dormant franchise -- the last of four Vacation movies hit screens in 1997 -- vainly tries to wring new laughs from an old premise, the one that made the 1983 original a hit.

Ed Helms (of the Bachelor Party movies) plays Rusty Griswold, the grown son of Clark Griswold, the character Chevy Chase portrayed in the original.

A disrespected pilot for an economy airline, Rusty has the same idea that his father had more than 20 years ago. He wants to bring his family closer together by taking them on a car trip from Chicago to California, home of Walley World, the theme park from the first movie.

Christina Applegate portrays wife Debbie Griswold, and Skyler Gisondo and Steele Stebbins play the Griswold kids.

The movie -- which features late-picture cameos from Chase and Beverly D'Angelo, the original Griswold mom -- stuffs its trunk with gags that tend to be more painful than funny, not to mention a few that are disgustingly gross.

How gross? At one point, the Griswolds find themselves covered with excrement, having mistaken a pool full of sewage for an invigorating hot springs.

The trip begins when Helms' dim-witted Rusty rents an Albanian car for the trip. Surprise! Nothing about the Albanian "Prancer" -- which looks the same when viewed from either the back or the front -- works properly.

A running gag involving a Griswold confrontation with the driver of a semi is predictable and dumb. And the youngest Griswold -- the kid played by Stebbins -- is one of the more obnoxious movie kids in some time, a foul-mouthed brat.

Throw in jokes about pedophilia, shabby motels, and the Griswolds' fading sex life and the picture should become clear.

Perhaps to add more connection with the original, Rusty stops to visit his now grown sister (Leslie Mann) who's married to a hunky weatherman (Chris Hemsworth) with a very large ...

Oh, the hell with it.

Vacation qualifies as more R-rated rot for a generation of moviegoers that probably never heard of National Lampoon, the humor magazine that spawned Animal House and the original Vacation .

Does any of this prove anything? Only that one trip to Walley World is enough for any family.

For the record: The original was directed by the late Harold Ramis (Groundhog Day) from a script by the late John Hughes (Ferris Bueller's Day Off). This one has two directors: John Francis Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein, neither of whom previously has directed a feature-length movie. Goldstein and Daley also are credited with having written the script.