remake of "Vacation" - Vanished Without a Trace?

Cafe Society
1

I was looking to go see it-it is nowhere to be found. Was the movie that terrible? of course, the original was very funny-it is hard to see how it could be improved upon.
Has anyone seen it? was it terrible?

2

Well, it was released just over a month ago and is probably still in some third-run houses. But the opening gross was only $15M and it’s halved by weeks since then. Total gross of $54M on a $31M budget puts it in the category of failure by most respects, although it does mean everyone got paid.

There’s no evidence it will have any long-term gross. RTM is 27%, Metacritic 34%.

3

88 mil worldwide on a 31 mil budget in just a month doesn’t sound like a failure to me.

4

Pretty sure it wasn’t a remake. I believe the main character was Rusty, all grown up and taking his family to Wally World.

5

I don’t see overseas box anywhere. No, that’s not a failure, but the reviews and the fast falloff in gross tells the tale.

6

I just checked my local listings. The closest is a worn down megaplex that shows a mix of first and second run stuff. So cheap-ish tickets.

A lot of movies don’t hang out in the better theaters for over a month. For each Jurassic World, there’s 5+ American Ultras. (And it seems like a 100 films that go straight to VOD.)

Things going against Vacation specifically:

  1. The trailers. Most fans of the original hated the trailers. It was clear that this was going to be a different type of humor. Why remake a classic and go in a different direction?

  2. The reviews. As noted, really bad. Some films are review-proof. E.g., the scary film of the month. But for films like this, reviews are starting to become a signifcant factor.

  3. Timing. Later in the summer is viewed as the dumping ground for crappy movies. People are more suspicious of movies released then. It takes a better combination of stuff to get a hit movie then.

  4. Some people like this sort of movie. But not a huge number and many weren’t brought in by the marketing. It’s also a perfect movie for “We’ll wait until it’s on Netflix.”

7

$31 million production budget; that doesn’t include what was spent to market it. May not have even broken even (Hollywood crazy accounting aside).

27% on Rotten Tomatoes. Their summary:

8

Sorry, only 82 mil total worldwide.

9

Most distributors would be pleased with weekend drops of 40% for a non-tentpole R movie. Between international box office and VOD, this film will do fine for its investors.