Although best known and loved as a comedy actor, for the last few years Robin Williams has been testing more serious waters in dramas like One Hour Photo (2002) and Insomnia (2002). RV however sees a Williams' card-carrying return to comedy.
He gets to play a dad who takes his family kicking and screaming on a road trip. You could say that it is the family holiday from hell that updates the legacy left behind in the 1980s by Chevy Chase and the National Lampoon "Vacation" movies...
Bob Munro (Williams), is a white-collar dad in trouble. His awful boss Todd (Will Arnett) forces him to cancel the family holiday to Hawaii; Bob either makes it to a meeting in Colorado or he's out.
Leaving his wife Jamie (Curb Your Enthusiasm's Cheryl Hines) and kids Cassie and Carl (singer JoJo and Zathura's Josh Hutcherson) in the dark about his conundrum, Bob rents the "mother of all campervans" to convince them a road trip to Colorado will be better, the trip of a lifetime in fact, and the holiday that will bring them all back together as one big happy hallmark family....
Nothing could be further from the truth. On the road in their so-dubbed "Rolling Turd", the Munros not only encounter rednecks and rabid racoons, but the oddball, cult-like Gornicke family, who appear to be stalking them.
Oh yeah - plus the sewerage system backs up and explodes, just to add insult to injury. They're not happy campers'
Director Barry Sonnenfeld (The Addams Family, Addams Family Values) pioneered his Tex Avery cartoon visual style working as a cinematographer on the Coen Brothers early films such as Blood Simple (1984) and Raising Arizona (1987).
He puts his trademark style to great use here in this hilarious satire on Middle America and family.
The material and his visual humour marry perfectly. Many of the jokes are gob-smackingly absurd, and many of them are sharp-edged and prescient, especially those related to Bob's position as a "wage slave" and office schlub.
RV reminded me of another surprisingly satisfying family satire, the remake of Fun With Dick & Jane (2005) starring Jim Carrey, and to a lesser extent, Gore Verbinski's excellent The Weatherman (2006), featuring Nicolas Cage as an introspective TV weather man, unsatisfied with his life and slowly disconnecting emotionally from the world around him.
Williams' Munro is similarly-drawn fellow to Cage's David Spritz, but Sonnenfeld doesn't allow him to wallow in self pity. He punishes him for it with lots of slapstick - this is a full-blown comedy after all.
The script is also a bit patchy and at times becomes a bit of a desert like the landscape the Munros are passing through. But just when you think there's not another joke to be had Sonnenfeld whacks another one right out of left field (Jeff Daniels and Kristen Chenoweth largely responsible for those as the righteous Gornickes, Travis and Mary Jo).
Rightly so, Williams plays it straight amid the chaos. Though the Hollywood ending prevents RV from being a classic, I loved that Williams wasn't forced to sell out his character when all was said and done. RV had me on board.
