None of these people are particularly good examples of the Christmas spirit. And the Griswsold children have grown sullen and ill-tempered, especially when Clark tries to enlist them in such projects as decorating the home with 125,000 light bulbs. Everything that can possibly go wrong will, of course, go wrong, and that includes Griswold locking himself in the attic, falling off the roof and being assaulted by the hillbilly cousin's ravenous hound.

There are long stretches in "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" when this almost works. The movie is curious in how close it comes to delivering on its material: Sequence after sequence seems to contain all the necessary material, to be well on the way toward a payoff, and then it somehow doesn't work.

Chevy Chase, playing Clark Griswold once again, is lovable and dogged in his determination to provide an ideal Christmas for his family. Beverly D'Angelo, that sunny and underrated screen comedian, is a loving wife. And Randy Quaid does what he can with the thankless role of Cousin Eddie, whose secret is that he and the family are actually living in that crappy old motor home, a shack on wheels, and don't have a dime to spend on Christmas. All of these actors do what they can, but the rhythm and pacing of the movie don't help them much.

I was disappointed, too, in how little was done with two sets of in-laws and the weirdo uncle and aunt. Maybe because there are simply too many characters for one movie, the in-laws are handled almost as a tour group, to be shunted around in the backgrounds of shot after shot or lined up as a quartet to react to Clark's dilemmas. The in-laws are supposed to hate each other, but not much is done with this, and indeed they hardly emerge as individuals.

That's not the case with the peculiar old Uncle Lewis (William Hickey) and Aunt Bethany (Mae Questel), who are gothic caricatures.