RV (2006)

Robin Williams
Jeff Daniels
Cheryl Hines
Joanna ‘JoJo’ Levesque
Josh Hutcherson

Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld

Plot: An overworked Bob Munro, his wife Jaime, their 15-year-old daughter Cassie and 12-year-old son Carl are in desperate need of some quality time together. After promising to take them on a family vacation in Hawaii, Bob abruptly changes plans without telling them. Instead of a week in a tropical paradise, they're going on a road trip to Colorado in a recreational vehicle. Dragging his wife and kids kicking and screaming into the RV, Bob's togetherness plan (which is partly a ruse to keep him from losing his job) almost immediately hits a major speed bump. Everything that can go wrong, does. Bob's lame attempts to navigate the unwieldy, oversized vehicle are met with silence and scorn from his resentful family. The RV life is a far cry from their comfortable life in Los Angeles, and every attempt Bob makes to get them into the spirit of the vacation threatens to tear them further apart. At an RV camp, the Munro family is befriended by the Gornicke family--an irritatingly endearing happy-go-lucky clan of full-time RVers. The more they try to elude the Gornickes, the more their paths seem destined to cross. But adversity has a way of uniting even the most dysfunctional family members and each setback the Munros experience inadvertently helps them become a true family again.

Review: I was a little hesitant to watch this film. Not because I didn’t think it looked, funny, but because I have come to accept Robin Williams as a brilliant dramatic actor (The Night Listener, Insomnia, & One Hour Photo) and wasn’t sure if I could see him in the funny role anymore.

Robin Williams is back! I really enjoyed this movie. It gave me the feeling of watching National Lampoon’s Vacation. The story is pretty basic, but flows pretty well. Seeing Robin Williams back in the slapstick role got me all giddy inside. He was great in this. Jeff Daniels gives a performance that reminds me of Dumb & Dumber, but with some intelligence. He was the cousin Eddie of this film, but with some surprise’s. The movie does have some flaws and isn’t the greatest or funniest movie I have ever seen, but it is a great family film.


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