Film Reviews

RV

• Rating:
• Director: Barry Sonnenfeld
• Starring: Cheryl Hines
• Details: US, 98mins, PG.

Since work pressures are mounting and with a big presentation due by the end of the week, put-upon father Bob Munro (Williams) is forced to cancel his family's Hawaiian vacation much to the chagrin of his dysfunctional clan that include wife Jamie (Hines), catty teenage daughter Cassie (Levesque) and body-building son Carl (Josh Hutcherson).To kill two birds with one stone, he rents an RV and takes the family on a road trip, hoping to write his presentation on the road. However, increasingly madcap farcical accidents manage to deter Bob from his goal while country hick Travis Gornicke (Daniels), on his own RV road trip, threatens to send him over the edge.
It's 'as you were' for Robin Williams who has tried to break away from these insipid comedies of late with darker roles in One Hour Photo and Insomnia. Williams, granted, is the funniest of the bunch but is that because he is a comedian who knows how to deliver a line or because he is given the only good lines? Just when you thought Williams could drag the movie up to his level, his quips quickly lose any wittiness as RV careers into the blind spot of monotony. When the old joke of "It's a lovely evening" - cue rain - gets an airing, you're left wondering if writer Geoff Rodkey ever saw a comedy before; The Shaggy Dog and Daddy Day Care scribe has written one of the laziest scripts in recent years and hopes his audience will be content with the sluggish jokes that we've seen a million times before. They won't however and RV is what your grandparents might call 'mildly amusing' if they could stay awake long enough.

Review by Gavin Burke