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Poster courtesy of the Internet Movie Database
�Pig in a Poke� is the newest game show in the US. Families dress up in pig costumes and answer questions. At the end, they can be pigs and win a great prize. And who�s starring on it? Why, none other than our favorite family the Griswalds (spelled differently in this one than the others)! After a close competition with resident champions the Froegers, they win a European vacation. Audrey (Dana Hill) doesn�t want to leave behind her boyfriend Jack (William Zabka), and Rusty (Jason Lively) just doesn�t want to go. They do, reluctantly, but this two week vacation doesn�t go without a hitch.
2nd released in the series, and usually considered least of the series, which I go with. Simply, it�s not as funny as the others: Vacation, Christmas Vacation, and Vegas Vacation. It tries to be more raucous and irreverent than the others. It doesn�t have a central grasp on any one plot. They go across Europe, but there�s nothing that connects all of the destinations. For instance, in Vacation there was Aunt Edna; Christmas Vacation, it actually had a real plot, and in Vegas Vacation there were a few subplots, but they all went through.
All that isn�t to say that it wasn�t funny, it�s just not as funny as the other three. As heard from Chevy Chase on the subpar DVD commentary, he wishes to do another Vacation movie. I would like to see that. Many of the laughs came from slapstick and pratfalls, which aren�t my favorite types of humor. Some of them were predictable (they go to Stonehenge�guess what?), but some of the gags (like on the train to Rome) were nice.
The MPAA wrongly gave this movie its PG-13 rating. It most definitely should have been rated R. The writers, which include veteran John Hughes, must have tried to keep the humor in the PG-13 range, because they didn�t �rough it up� as much as they wanted to.
One last thought: if there was an earlier movie version of Chicago, Beverly D�Angelo would have been perfect as Roxie.
Rated PG-13 for sustained scenes of nudity, sexual situations, teen drinking and language.
Review Date: February 7, 2003
