Barry Sonnenfeld is right: There is some- thing inherently funny about a big, ungainly recreational vehicle, even for those who own them and love them.
Can you be depressed in an RV? (OK, Jack Nicholson from “About Schmidt,” don’t answer that question.)
RVs are for comedy and high jinks, with their surreal paint jobs and interior fabrics replicated only on Las Vegas bedspreads. In a way, they rank as the ultimate portable American gadget. RV use comes with a guaranteed family story: Silly things happen to good people.
But Sonnenfeld as the director of “RV” took too much of that for granted. Knowing RVs are funny, he forgot to find a script that proved it. “RV” begins with promising sarcasm and biting laughs, then slips the emergency brake and careens downhill into a forgettable montage of manufactured crises and teachable moments.
In the script by Geoff Rodkey (“Daddy Day Care”), Robin Williams is a Pasadena dad beset by a cruel boss and children who are indifferent at best, abusive at worst. A summer vacation in Hawaii should heal all wounds, until Williams’ boss orders him to Boulder a week hence to lead an important sales pitch.
To preserve the illusion of vacation, Williams rents a garish RV and points it toward the Rocky Mountains.
Wife Cheryl Hines’ response: RVs are for friendly people, and “Honey, try to remember, we’re not friendly.” Daughter Joanna Levesque’s response: “Why don’t we just stay home and set fire to an oil field?”
Williams is not the wrong choice to captain this gas-guzzling ship. His aura of barely controlled rage, mixed with maudlin familial affection, sets everyone on edge.
Sonnenfeld’s mistake was surrounding Williams with relative lightweights, and failing to take advantage of the real acting talent he did sign – people like Jeff Daniels. Rodkey’s script muzzles its bite somewhere in Utah.
It’s hard for family-travel movies like “RV” to shake the friendly ghost of Randy Quaid in the National Lampoon farces. Quaid was the model for a foil who brought eccentricity, inspired stupidity and near-
hysteria to the folding card table of life. Here, the wide-ranging talents of Daniels (from “The Squid and the Whale” to “Dumb and Dumber”) seem locked in the luggage compartment for fear of overshadowing Williams.
Not that I’m automatically against extended sequences involving bathroom humor. “Meet the Fockers” spent a lot of time in and around the RV toilet, and joke writers can’t seem to resist the crude fact that in a mobile home, Americans finally have to spend some time confronting their own waste.
Be forewarned: This “RV” family handles pipes full of poo for a good 10 minutes, at a moonscape campground built to resemble the scorched ground of Nevada. And it’s one of the better sequences in the film, as a supportive crowd of fellow RVers gathers in lawn chairs to watch the show of the Munro family trying desperately to dump sewage down the appropriate hole.
Sonnenfeld had succeeded at comedy high and low, with a classic like “Get Shorty” and crowd-pleasers like “Men in Black.” The problem in “RV” is not that the comedy is low – I appreciate a well-timed groin-kick more than most critics – but that it’s so inconsistent.
If an RV is going to make us feel mean, then by all means drive that sucker all the way to Kenosha and back. Don’t ask me to believe the 15-year-
old girl with the meanest mouth in the West is redeemed by one 10-mile hike into the wilderness. In my experience, a long hike is a good way to turn a harmless teenager into a potential felon.
Please don’t schedule a family hug before we get a bar fight with the local Harley club; and don’t give Dad an epiphany before you give him a colonoscopy and Mom runs off with a park ranger.
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-820-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com.
“RV” | ** RATING
PG for mild language, crude humor|1 hour, 30 minutes|FAMILY COMEDY| Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld; written by Geoff Rodkey; starring Robin Williams, Jeff Daniels, Cheryl Hines and Kristen Chenoweth|Opens today at area theaters.
