Vacation (2015)

There are some amusing predicaments typical of the sort the old Griswolds got themselves into, in this 2015 new generation tie-in to the National Lampoon's movie series, but the new movie doesn't work very well because where the Chevy Chase movies were comedies for the whole family with a moral compass and humour of both the more risque adult variety and some goofy childish stuff as well, this new movie is aimed squarely at a teenage audience judging from all the young people in it who swear like troopers, the outrageous lack of consequence in scenes that end calamitously with injury and death, and not to mention the update's distinct lack of heart — this is sometimes funny, but more often shrill, puerile.

★★☆☆☆

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The Bling Ring (2013)

Sofia Coppola's movie based on a Vanity Fair article about a spate of celebrity home robberies that occurred across Calabasas, California in 2008, is a breezy work of 86 minutes that presents the thieves, a gang of petulant fame- and fashion-fixated high schoolers, in their own superficial light, as wilful narcissicists who rifle through celebrities' private homes and personal belongings in the same way they browse glossy magazines or click through the TMZ website.

★★★☆☆

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