The Great Outdoors
Lazy John Hughes-scripted comedy a summer bummer
The late writer/ director/ producer John Hughes was born February 18, 1950 in Lansing, Michigan. He’d be celebrating his 75th birthday this month. Video Days kicks off its inaugural month with a retrospective of ten of the filmmaker’s pictures.
THE GREAT OUTDOORS (1988) manages not one moment of original thought, and worse, nary a laugh. Written and (executive) produced by John Hughes, a filmmaker legendary for cranking out a new script in days, there was never better evidence for that than this summer comedy, composed of what seem like bits from a rejected sequel to National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983), which Hughes also wrote. By this time, the writer had the prestige to choose his director, ensuring his scripts wouldn’t be tampered with, and this creative authority proved fatal.
After directing two of his screenplays without a break–She’s Having A Baby (1988) and Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)–Hughes took eighteen months off to write. He lobbed a broad comedy he’d written about brothers-in-law who assemble their families for a lake vacation to Howard Deutch, who’d worked for Hughes directing Pretty In Pink (1986) and Some Kind of Wonderful (1987). Dan Aykroyd and John Candy, who’d almost starred in the security guard comedy Armed and Dangerous (1986) before Candy got stuck trying to make something of it with Eugene Levy, were cast as the brothers-in-law. Set in Wisconsin, summer ended up being more practical to fake in California. Shooting commenced in late October 1987 at Bass Lake, a town at 3,415’ in the vicinity of Yosemite National Park.
Most of the scenes in and around the “Loon’s Nest” cabin were shot on the Universal Studios backlot, including those featuring Bart the Bear, a trained Kodiak who weighed as much as a grand piano. The film marked the first collaboration between Hughes and Universal Pictures in what was hoped to be a long-term deal, the studio’s new chairman Tom Pollock formerly a partner in the entertainment law firm of Pollock, Bloom and Dekom, which represented Hughes. Written and produced as Big Country, the studio suggested a title change to avoid confusion with two other “big” comedies scheduled for release in June 1988: Big and Big Business. Opening later that month in the U.S. on 1,233 screens, The Great Outdoors struggled to pull away from its competition, occupying a spot among the top ten grossing films for only four weeks. Deutch took blame for the film’s reception, admitting he wasn’t the director for a big comedy like Vacation. Cutting professional ties with John Hughes, Deutch’s next film Article 99 (1992) would be more drama than comedy.
There are signs in The Great Outdoors that point toward a good movie. Hughes ignores these to drive us to territory we’ve been to before, and had a better time visiting. Having written both National Lampoon’s Vacation and National Lampoon’s European Vacation (1985), Hughes had runway for National Lampoon’s Country Vacation, maybe with Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) losing his job and unable to take his family on another expensive summer trip, resorting to visiting Cousin Eddie (Randy Quaid) in the sticks, where his crass cousin-in-law is suddenly the more successful family man. Short of a Vacation sequel, there was a good movie here about the rivalry between brothers-in-law for the respect of the women and children in their families. Truth is overlooked for jokes in which the families are pestered by every wild animal in the lake district–racoons, a bat, a bear–or Aykroyd and Candy trying to make outdoor activities like water skiing or horseback riding funny. Playing a father isn’t Candy’s strong suit. A wonderful actor who exudes likability but is only as funny as the script he’s working from, Candy had marginally better material and a good director (Carl Reiner) in the same movie as this one: Summer Rental (1985), in which Candy played an air traffic controller who takes his family on a beach vacation.
Hughes can’t even be bothered with giving Candy’s character an existence beyond the silly situations that happen to him. The film is noteworthy for its casting of two supporting roles that have compelling characters buried in them. Lucy Deakins plays a pool-shooting carhop who Candy’s oldest son develops googly eyes for, and in her film debut, Annette Bening was cast as Aykroyd’s high-maintenance wife. Bening and Deakins (and Bart the Bear) are the reasons to watch The Great Outdoors. The women at least prove that the eighties were the time for a comedy about a divorcée (played by Bette Midler, Diane Keaton or Goldie Hawn, or if the script and director were unique, Meryl Streep, Cher or Sigourney Weaver) forced to take time away from work when she’s stuck with her daughters for the month of June. We expect more from the creator of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) and Planes, Trains and Automobiles, two of the funniest movies ever made, than this also-ran.
Video rental category: Comedy
Special interest: Forever Summer
Hey Joe… For me, all of Hughes‘s films kind of blurred together, although planes trains and automobiles stick out in my head… Regardless, as always great analysis and great information… Thanks again, great job! Peace! CPZ