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PLOT: Beleaguered dad Robin Williams takes his squabbling family on a holiday in an RV, discovering there is a heaven of possibilities in the hell of life on the road.
Fortunately, not all Hollywood family comedies are brainless and disposable. On occasion, there is one that layers a little heart and a bit of intelligence into the hijinks. Like RV.
You might not think that, looking at the trailer and the poster, but RV has the charm and the depth to make the slapstick laughs worthwhile.
The story is simple and generic. Geoff Rookey's script has Robin Williams as the head of an all-American, upper middle class family that has been plunged into hormonal hell in Los Angeles. The pitch of Williams' nicely wrought performance is real. He is the hapless everyman of movies.
His teen daughter (young singer-actress Joanna JoJo Levesque) and his 12-year-old son (Josh Hutcherson) are at war -- of course -- and neither thinks dad is cool.
The marriage (with Cheryl Hines as the mom) is frayed at the edges, and dad worries about his job status while working for a selfish monster.
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The family ends up having to trade in an exotic Hawaiian vacation for an extended outing in a garish recreational vehicle headed for the mountains.
Dad has ulterior motives. The wife and kids are annoyed, concerned and dismayed, as hell overtakes them on the road, especially when their lives become interconnected with a redneck red-state family (headed by an hilariously deadpanning Jeff Daniels).
Of course, not everything is as it seems. RV is a road movie in the traditional sense -- that even random experiences transform people when they are taken out of their usual safe niches. In this case, the Williams clan members learn a lot about each other, and even grow to appreciate their hillbilly counterparts.
RV looks beautiful. It should, it was shot on locationin B.C. and Alberta, although the story is set in the U.S. west. But the interior landscapes are interesting, too. Director Barry Sonnenfeld explores the family dynamics of both the Williams and the Daniels families with a keen eye for human behaviour. When the individuals are thrust into comic situations, they carry some emotional baggage and don't just come off as stereotypes or human props for the gags.
That makes the gags -- such as the brown geyser when the RV flushing goes so terribly awry -- that much funnier.
In RV, Williams and Daniels are not exactly Laurel & Hardy, but they have good chemistry as their lives intersect for better and for worse.
Then, when the other layers of the movie are developed -- such as the realistic father-daughter relationship -- the movie takes on a little more weight. You laugh with instead of at the characters. And RV has some lasting appeal.
BOTTOM LINE: Not the usual throwaway family comedy from Hollywood. It is funny, and even silly-gross at times, but it has heart and smarts, too.
(This film is rated PG)