Warner Bos., 1985

Starring: Chevy Chase, Beverly D’Angelo, Dana Hill and Jason Lively

Directed by: Amy Heckerling 

The plot: After a long winning streak on the game show “Pig in a Poke,” the Griswold family trades in their pile of prizes for a crack at the game show’s notoriously difficult bonus round. A lucky answer earns Clark (Chase), his wife Ellie (D’Angelo), daughter Audrey (Hill) and son Rusty (Lively) an all-inclusive two-week vacation through Europe. But vacations are never an easy thing for the Griswolds to tackle, and from the moment they arrive in England, things go terribly awry. Cramped motel rooms, car crashes, awkward visits with relatives and large-scale brawls all befall the beleaguered family. As Audrey pines for her boyfriend back in Chicago and Rusty tries to hook up with every European hottie he sees, Clark struggles to hold his family together and make the vacation a success. After stops in England, France and Germany, the vacation winds down in Rome. Just as things are starting to go well for the Griswolds, a run-in with two bumbling Italian thieves thrusts the family into a high-stakes car chase through the streets of Rome.

Why it’s good: No comedy series has ever perfectly captured the feeling of a family vacation gone horribly, horribly bad as well as the three “Vacation” films from the 1980s. What makes “European Vacation” so great is the combination of slapstick buffoonery and cringe-inducing awkward moments of culture clash. One of the best sequences in the movie is also one of the least chaotic—Clark and his family show up in Germany to visit some distant relatives. But, in typical Griswold fashion, they show up at the wrong house, force their way in and badger a poor elderly couple into feeding them and putting them up for the night. It’s the ultimate uncomfortable moment (at least for the old folks) in a vacation made up of nothing but uncomfortable moments, and it’s hilarious to see Chevy Chase and company wreak havoc in such a subtle fashion. Of course, the car chase at the end is cool, too, and the scene with the dog jumping off the Eiffel Tower never gets old.

Why you should own it: The three “Vacation films—“Vacation,” “European Vacation” and “Christmas Vacation”—are all definitely worth owning. Sadly, the Warner Bros. DVD of “European Vacation” doesn’t contain much beyond the film itself. But you should probably pick it up anyway.