THE FADED SPOTLIGHT

Home for the holidays—harmless enough, unless you’re a Griswold. Clark (Chevy Chase) wants to trap lightning in tinsel. The perfect Christmas. But just because he’s staying home this year, eschewing doomed road trips or an overseas vacation, doesn’t make him safe. Every well-intentioned step forward in his domestic battleground brings a fresh disaster around the corner. This movie is one man, one snow shovel, 25,000 imported Italian twinkle lights, and the faint smell of eggnog to go along with the psychological slippage.

The family arrives soon after. They come in waves. In-laws, aunts, uncles, Cousin Eddie (Randy Quaid) descend upon his house like spirits answering to a bad invocation. This is family with no interest in trying to end their gatherings with cheese-eating grins or gooey moments of reconciliation. There’s always next year if they want to do that. Or at one of their funerals. As for this year, they let the dysfunction accumulate like snow on the roof. And then we get to sit back and just watch it all cave in.

Chase once again plays Clark like a man tiptoeing across thin ice while holding a flaming fruitcake. He has niceness, but it’s weaponized. He might smile at you, but you’ll see his molars. He might dutifully staple those twinkle lights to his roof, but he’ll do it with a kind of vengeance.

Clark keeps it together well enough that his therapist would be proud. That is, until the Christmas bonus his boss promised him fails to materialize. The bonus he planned to use for a backyard pool. When that envelope finally arrives with a subscription to the Jelly of the Month Club instead, the Band-Aids, string, and bubblegum holding him together finally detonate. That’s the movie’s sweet spot. When Clark’s optimism combusts.

The slapstick holds up beautifully. If you don’t believe there’s art to a well-timed squirrel attack or a vaporized cat. Or a grandma who confuses grace with the Pledge of Allegiance, I present you with Christmas Vacation. It thrives on gags that seem to almost go off by accident. Jokes where you feel free to laugh first and then process later.

Jeremiah S. Chechik directs from a John Hughes script (one of his wackiest) with deliberate looseness. Everything seems pitched a few degrees off center, which is precisely what makes all of this irresistible. The original Vacation had the better punchline, but this entry might be better overall. The jokes are tighter and the structure’s less episodic. The rhythm seems better tuned to the physical comedy that comes with Clark’s optimism melting away, like candle wax.

And best of all, the movie even has a bit of heart. Beneath all the mishaps and moaning is a man trying to make an ordinary family gathering into something beautiful. Clark’s no buffoon—just a man imprisoned by his own expectations. He thinks perfection’s a matter of wattage. One more strand of lights, and maybe everything will finally fall into place. Maybe some of his guests will remember the day for the right reasons. Or at least some of the right reasons.

The moment this sequel opens its mouth, you can already hear who isn’t in the room. Chris Tucker. (You know a sequel’s in trouble when your first thought is how much you miss Chris Tucker.) The first film thrived on his helium jitter-buzz. Noise that somehow made the stillness work. Without it, the movie shuffles forward but keeps sneaking these little looks around. Like the energy stepped out and never sent word back.

Ice Cube is back as the leading man Craig, naturally. John Witherspoon, who stole whole scenes in the first film, returns as the father. He squeezes in a few good grumbles, but the sequel shows its limits early when it kicks off with him stepping in dog feces and bragging that he won’t wipe it off. In the first movie he could turn petty irritations into minor epics. Here it mostly becomes other people complaining about how bad his shoe smells.

The action starts this time with Craig lying low in the suburbs after he gets word that his cousin Deebo (Tommy “Tiny” Lister Jr.) busted out of prison. He moves in with his uncle (Don “D.C.” Curry) and cousin Day-Day (Mike Epps), and the film strands them in a cul-de-sac with a hostile Latino gang next door. It begins with loud music and a few macho stares, then somehow we’re looking at threats, weapons, and somebody’s fence learning what “collateral damage” means. Meanwhile, the big “hideout” plan barely holds. By the third act, Deebo and his brother stroll in and pull the movie straight back to Craig’s backyard.

The movie moves in sputters. First a long, twitchy lead-up to a fight, then a couple of stray scuffles in the neighborhood, then a lap through Day-Day’s strip-mall security job. And it all ends in a backyard dust-up filmed like Saturday-morning mayhem. None of it has stakes, or momentum, or anything resembling a solid shape. Epps comes in jittery and bright, the film’s unofficial Tucker stand-in. The trouble is it keeps tugging on that same energy until the bit starts thinning out. Scenes run past their natural exit. Jokes would rather circle the block than end.

There are laughs. They’re just fewer, scattered like loose screws. Next Friday remembers the characters and the basic blueprint. What held the first film together doesn’t survive the sequel’s grip. The timing goes slack, the tone drifts, and the leftover charm gets stretched out until the film can’t really hold its shape.