Vegas Vacation (1997) on Netflix
Clark Griswold earns a bonus and vacation time at work. He tells his family he is taking them to Las Vegas and intends to renew his marriage vows with Ellen.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.0/1056,834 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes15%
Trailer
Plot summary
Clark Griswold's employer gives him a bonus and vacation time after he produces a food preservative, and he tells Ellen and the children that they are going to Las Vegas, where he plans to renew his wedding vows. Ellen and teenage daughter Audrey doubt that the city suits a family trip, while teenage son Rusty is keen. In Las Vegas the family attend a Siegfried & Roy show and visit Cousin Eddie Johnson, who lives with his wife Catherine on a former hydrogen-bomb test site north of the city.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Vegas Vacation (1997)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Wayne Newton, who plays a fictionalized version of himself, asked for a script change to preserve his public image: he was to tell Ellen that becoming a "Newton broad" meant "a nose job, a boob job and a butt job", then pull a string to reveal 200 women who had had the surgery.
- Hughes had shown dissatisfaction with how the series had turned into a star vehicle for Chevy Chase, and noted that Warner Bros. Pictures never told him about Vegas Vacation, which he only heard about by reading a trade magazine; when approached by disappointed fans he insisted that he "had nothing to do with it".
- One scene involved Chase's stunt double, John Robotham, swinging from a rope and slamming into the dam face; crews did several takes of it, with Robotham attached to a series of ropes and bolts 637 feet above the dam's power plant.
- Filming took place at Las Vegas' Chapel of the Bells, where the film's producer Jerry Weintraub and his wife Jane Morgan had been married in the mid-1960s; Weintraub also appears in the film as "Jilly from Philly".
- Although Embry is well known for his role in the film, he said in 2015: "let's face it, it's a horrible movie. It's not anywhere as good as the first one or the Christmas one." Those two, he said, were home runs.
- Ethan Embry and Marisol Nichols became the fourth different set of actors to play the Griswold children, Audrey and Rusty. Brittany Murphy had originally been cast as Audrey but turned it down, and Nichols did not think she would be cast because of her Latina heritage and having never acted in a film.
- Matty Simmons, who produced earlier films in the series, resigned as producer after an impasse with one of the executives: "I sat there for months and finally I said 'Here, go make the movie.'" He was instead credited as an executive producer.
