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Film
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Johnson Family Vacation
Twenty years after Chevy Chase pointed the ‘family truckster’ towards Wally World, comedian Cedric the Entertainer aims for his own benchmark of smiles per gallon.
Wednesday, April 7, 2004
By Todd Gilchrist
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Johnson Family Vacation is a movie for any family that has ever taken a road trip with one another and still has a sense of humor about the experience. Cedric the Entertainer’s latest film is remarkably faithful to the mood of a long, long car trip that feels like it will never end, with moments of hilarious absurdity, long lulls where nothing happens, and just enough weird, awkward silences between parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, that once it’s done you want never to speak of it again.
The Barbershop comedian stars as insurance salesman Nate Johnson, who arrives at an auto detailing shop to pick up the family cruiser for their upcoming trip. “I-10 by ten,” he needles, in that perfect, paternal voice that reminds you of all those rushed mornings when you weren’t quite packed, but your father nevertheless shuffled you out the door.
Nate’s SUV, much to his dismay, has been transformed into one of those hulking, shiny behemoths dogs fear, complete with every accoutrement the modern-day player might enlist to fully pimp out his prospective ride. But he only cares that it wasn’t fitted with an 8-track player.
Nate and his son DJ (rapper Bow Wow) cruise home to pick up the rest of the Johnson clan, who actually live a little further down the street - the boys are separated from the girls because of Nate’s stubbornness. Soon, the family, which includes estranged wife Dorothy (Vanessa Williams) and daughters Nikki (Solange Knowles) and Destiny (Gabby Soleil), are heading towards the Johnson Family Reunion, a gathering-cum-competition presided over by Nate’s disapproving mother Glorietta (Aloma Wright) and older brother Max (Steve Harvey).
On the trip, they encounter everything from troubles with the police to confrontations with alligators, and soon it becomes not only a question whether they will win the annual “best family” contest, but whether they will survive the trip at all.
The movie is at its most inspired when it lets Cedric riff on the everyman persona he perfected in his Original Kings of Comedy act, forgetting the conventions of the “road trip” plot and allowing the family interactions to take center stage. Cedric’s dismissal of Bow Wow’s music because the performers have all either been shot or killed plays like a subversive commentary on today’s idolatry of flawed and often disreputable celebrities, but the script gives DJ a painful rejoinder, casting out CDs by Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke and Al Green (“it was hot grits, but that’s good enough for me”) on the same grounds and making the playing field far more level than baby boomers often think about.
The remainder of the film, which is largely devoted to such distractions as an alligator attack, deadens the whip-smart timing of Cedric’s comic delivery, and makes the rich characterizations squeeze back into the formulaic roles from whence they came. Only Cedric’s occasional tomfoolery, such as his naked encounter with a group of hefty sorority girls in a hotel hot tub, elevates the lackluster material beyond what audiences might expect, but those moments are too few and far between to sustain the film’s long-feeling hundred minutes.
While this may sound like blanket criticism of lightweight material, Cedric’s movie only really fails by half. Unlike most movies that purport to be family-based entertainment, Johnson Family Vacation truly delivers on that claim.
The adult jokes are played delicately enough to evoke real laughs for the ‘rents, and the kids will giggle at the multigenerational conflicts, the family’s weird encounters with hitchhikers, and Cedric’s remarkable ability to throw his weight around to great comic effect. Unfortunately, many of those charms disappear when the plot takes over and the story’s three-act structure must be sated, and not even an eleventh-hour appearance of Nate’s Uncle Earl (also played by Cedric) can redeem its downward spiral.
Ultimately, Johnson Family Vacation is more effective as a metaphor for those old road trips than a portrayal of one; that may sound limiting, but I personally know families that never spoke to each other again after one of these things.
Audiences will find much to enjoy in this Easter weekend offering, despite the fact that too much time will be spent waiting for the next fun, exciting or enjoyable comic destination. Like impatient kids sitting in the back seat, the audience will likely be asking far too often, ‘Are we there yet? Sadly, Cedric, the answer is no.
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