RV (2006, UMD)

There is a scene early on in RV where Robin Williams asks his family what would be a good name for the RV they just rented to take on a business trip disguised as a family vacation. The daughter, a Vegetarian Goth, suggests "big turd". Her younger brother favors "Big Rolling Turd".

It's to RV's credit that it doesn't quite sink to the level of quality of that second suggested name for the titular camper. Is RV dumb? Yes. But calling it that is beside the point. It was deliberately designed to be dumb. Is RV an awful movie? No. In terms of quality it's not a Robin Williams comedy classic like Good Morning Vietnam or The Birdcage. But it's not a hot steaming piece of crap like Flubber or Toys or a seriously misguided attempt at nobility like Hook. No, it's basically a generic family vacation movie with some amusing moments. Not excruciating to watch while it's on. But half an hour later you've forgotten most of it.

The first real problem with RV is that it does have some amusing moments. However, most of those amusing moments are given away in the trailer and what's left over is pretty painful.

Williams plays Bob Munro, a workaholic dad who's an exec at a soda company. In the traditional of movies of this type, he's so devoted to his work that he doesn't spend as much time as he should with his family. He wants to change that. He plans a vacation to Hawaii. However, his slimy boss changes that plan by ordering him to go to Colorado and deliver a presentation. So the Hawaii plan is off. To make up for it, Williams rents an RV and decides to take his (reluctant) family with him. From there it's a short trip to chaos.

From one POV, the road trip comedy might appear to have some steam left in it. From the other POV, it would appear to be as dead as the corpse of Jimmy Hoffa. A viewing of this movie is likely to make one lean toward the latter.

Just as the family is about to take off in the RV, there's a scene where Williams can't get his safety belt fastened. Experienced moviegoers will observe right away that a screenwriter is seriously out of ideas when he breaks that trick out. They will make the same observation a few miles down the road when Williams struggles with the RV's sewage tank. They will make it even louder when the inevitable result of the struggle with the sewage tank becomes apparent. And so on when Jeff Daniels shows up as a Redneck camper with his family.

Those cliches are annoying enough when they're intended to be funny. But they get even worse when the movie tries to go into serious moralizing mode. There are several preachy moments on the value of family and how one should not sacrifice family to be the big cheese in a company. Yawn.

Williams, to give him credit, is fairly decent here. Yet he also doesn't work quite as well in this role as he should. It seems like he was trying to recapture the success of his role in Mrs. Doubtfire. But he fails. There are moments where you find yourself thinking that Barry Sonnenfeld should've cast Jim Carrey in the role (and I never thought I would ever say that a movie would've worked better with Jim Carrey instead of Robin Williams).

I'll synopsize one more scene from this movie. The family's at the RV Park and Williams has to go fix the sewage tank. He asks his wife to help him and she replies "As appealing as that sounds I think I'll pass". That line is the one you should use if someone suggests going to see RV. Instead casually suggest staying home and renting National Lampoon's Vacation if you want to see a funny road trip movie or any of the good Robin Williams movies I mentioned above if you want to see RW be funny. Anything but RV, which follows in the path of the titular camper from the movie in rolling down a hill and sinking to the bottom of a lake.