Tags
1980s, 80s, Comedy, Dan Akroy, Film, Great Outdoors, John Candy, Movie Trailer
Summer is right around the corner. Time to start planning those memory-making family vacations. Need a little motivation? Maybe John Candy and Dan Akroyd will inspire you to visit the great outdoors. Posted by YouTube user spamanator666.
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The Great Outdoors is classic 80’s cinema, Roman aka Dan Akroid was fantastic alongside the always amazing John Candy. I like this film because it was a John Candy specialty- the Anti-Buddy film! While other films Akroid was doing at the time such as Spies Like Us, and Ghostbusters were classic buddy films, John was doing the opposite of the buddy film with the Great Outdoors and Plains, Trains, and Automobiles!
I love everything about this movie. Akroyd and Candy were at the very tops of their games. I laugh to myself every time I think of the bear chase scene. Big bear…big bear chase me…
Funny you mention this.
As an 80’s kid myself, I watched more than my fair share of The Great Outdoors when it came out. A while back, I watched it again for the first time in ages. Still a good flick.
However, one minor detail in particular struck my “getting old” chord pretty hard. It’s during the scene in which the son is missing his date — I believe due to the steak eating contest — so he’s frantically running around trying to find a payphone to let her know that he has not forgotten about her or their date and that he is, in fact, NOT breaking the promise that he JUST MADE in which he swore to NEVER: forget about her, miss any of their dates, stand her up, leave her hanging, hurt her feelings, or let her down in any way imaginable — until the end of time, in sickness or in health, ’til death do they part, indivisible, with liberty & justice for all, and, well something like that…
But yeah, he was trying to find a payphone.
HOLY CRAP! That’s when it hit me.
The sensation of stupidity flooded me when I caught myself wondering why he doesn’t just use a cell phone. Derrrrr.
A payphone? Really?? No cell phones??? Was The Great Outdoors actually made during such an ancient era of technologically barbaric antiquity IN A WORLD COMPLETELY DEVOID of flip phones, smart phones, data plans, family plans, texting, sexting, iPods, iTunes, iPhones, iPads, Amazon, Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, IMDb, DSL, HDTV, ADHD, and (let’s not forget) Google???? I mean, do elementary children even know what a payphone is????? Or who John Candy is?????? Or that there was this inexplicably strange decade known as the 1980’s???????
— All points to ponder, but I’m not exactly prepared for the answers.
Getting down to brass tacks, my most recent viewing of The Great Outdoors gave me quite a startling revelation. This beloved movie that came into existence during my (not-so-distant) youth, has suddenly become a sort of monument to represent the duality of time. The progression of events occurring in the present is so slow & gradual that the perceived duration into the past is virtually obscured. And yet, the future is always an instant away. Therefore, it seems as though a movie such as The Great Outdoors could not possibly be old because, hey, I’m not old. And also because I just watched it when it came out, like… uh… 30 years ago. Seriously? Wow. The distance between the present moment and a moment in the past constantly increases as the instances of time gradually accumulate, but that passage of time happens so slowly it is not always noticeable how distant the past is growing from the present until an expected future event occurs as the present, or you watch a movie after several years and are baffled by how much the distance from the present to that point in the past has increased. And no matter how much time has passed or how long it seemed to take, this moment has arrived in an instant.
So, that story illustrates the commencement of my mid-life crisis. Sorry for such a ridiculously lengthy comment (more like a blog post in itself); It just kind of hit a nerve (in the best way possible). Then it was too much fun once I got going. Not to mention, I’ve got these manic episodes that kick in from time to time, and this just so happens to be one of those times. You see? I can’t stop!
Ok. I’m done.
Thanks for the 80’s flashback!
– Peace
There is no way your response should be buried in the comments section. Do you mind if I post this? I’ll link it to your blog and give full credit.
If I remember correctly, Roman actually had a brick cell phone in the movie. So the technology (barely) existed. The time capsule I can’t get past is the scene from the drive-in theater. Why in the hell did drive-in theaters disappear. And arcades too. Makes no sense. What event drove these things away? Personal computers? DVD players? I’ll throw away every electronic device I own if it resurrects drive-ins and arcades. And vinyl albums too.