193 - Summer Rental

    An overworked air traffic controller goes on a vacation to Florida with his family.
    I remember the box art for this movie.  It wasn’t the content of the art, but it was the layout that made it stand out.  I never rented it, but I was always a little curious.  I’ve grown up to really love 80’s comedies; particularly sex comedies.  They’re formulaic, but there’s always a little something interesting or bizarre about them.
    This is probably one of the worst 80’s comedies I’ve seen.  It’s a real puzzle though, since Carl Reiner directed it, it has some of his sensibilities all over it, and the script actually has some very good jokes in it.  So what went wrong?
    There are two core problems, and in a way, they’re the same.  John Candy is the lead, and he’s just not very likable.  He doesn’t quite have a save-the-cat moment.  When the movie opens, we’re introduced to him leaving for work.  He takes two eggs with him to eat in the car.  One of them turns out to not peel easily, and the other one isn’t cooked at all.  The good thing is that he doesn’t get outrageously angry because of this.  The bad thing is that he still gets annoyed.  This reminded me of seeing the original pilot that became The Dick Van Dyke Show; it was a story that got reworked later, but they had Carl Reiner playing the lead.  The story wound up playing terribly.  There were funny gags, but the whole thing seemed like the lead was such a jerk, there was no reason to want him to do well.  The same thing is repeated here.
    At first, I wondered if this was the first feature Carl Reiner directed.  Then I checked his credits, and this is actually a late period one.  Prior to this, he directed The Jerk!  All of Me!  The Man with Two Brains!  He knows what he’s doing, and yet, this movie seemed sloppy.
    There isn’t much of a plot until pretty late in the movie, when a boat race becomes the big finish event.  Even this is shot in a way that seems to be the most dull way possible.
    Seeing this also made me wonder what makes John Candy likable.  He isn’t a bad presence, but he isn’t especially funny.  I don’t think there were any deliveries he had that stood out.
    Maybe it’s just a sign of the times, but this didn’t seem funny.  It was clearly intended to be a comedy, but the laughs just aren’t there.