Overrated

Once again, every time I see one of these posts trashing a classic movie from the 80's or some other decade that didn't involve their Generation, they dump on it and this is a prime example right here.. Basically, it's a movie that's Generational and that if you were part of this Era and when SNL was decent, you'd get this movie

It's pretty original in a way. Unlike Home Alone, any of the Christmas Carol stories, Rudolph, The Santa Clause, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Elf, Bad Santa, The Grinch, Black Christmas, Miracle on 34th Street, It's a Wonderful Life, and all of the other staples of the Christmas movie genre, Christmas Vacation, as silly as it gets, is a fairly simple, grounded-in-reality (albeit exaggerated) holiday story that I think many people can relate to on a personal level. It hits close to home with the tangled lights, the quirky (and sometimes embarrassing) family piling in, Christmas dinner, decorating, picking out Christmas trees, shopping, the overwhelming stress of all of this, and so many little, seemingly mundane things that perfectly define what Christmas is for a lot of us. The only other movie that comes to mind that also does this extremely well is A Christmas Story, which is equally beloved (for similar reasons, I'd wager).

And for both of these movies, as someone else mentioned, they manage to accomplish this in a fun and funny way that doesn't come across as overly fluffy, kiddy, gimmicky, or nauseatingly sentimental. It's just a good movie that would be entertaining to watch even if it wasn't Christmas.

That being said, a lot of us who feel so strongly about the movie didn't dive into it expecting it to be the ultimate Christmas movie or some amazing piece of cinema. If we had, no doubt we'd probably have been let down, as well. But that's true for most "classics", honestly.