THE GREAT OUTDOORS
John Hughes doesn't agonize over his scripts: he is famous for batting out drafts in a few days. And sometimes haste pays off. His teen comedies Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink have the urgency of passion recollected in heat. By contrast, his movies about grownups -- Mr. Mom and the Vacation farces -- come off as slapdash, complacent, a bad blend of Norman Rockwell and National Lampoon. But none of his films seems so hastily conceived, so ill conceived as The Great Outdoors. Hughes must have written it between meals.
Fast food too. In...