Decent watch at best, probably won't watch again, but can recommend for those on a late-eighties nostalgia kick.

Sometimes it is good to get in "The Way Back Machine" and see some of the movies that made people famous, and I liked Dan Aykroyd and John Candy.

The duplicitous plot and character choices just didn't sit great with me. Having recently seen "Brother Nature", it is interesting to see a movie that could have inspired it. I think it would have been a lot better with John Candy as an overwhelmingly positive buzzkill and Aykroyd playing a family man. But Candy is sort of the family man of the late 1980s, and Aykroyd is the quintessential New York scumbag, and they do it well.

I'd ultimately say it is worth the watch, but there are probably a dozen "back to nature" movies I could recommend in front of this one.

John Candy plays a humble family man who rents a lakeside cottage, hoping to share a few lasting memories with his kids in the same haunts he once explored as a younger man. Dan Aykroyd, his obnoxious brother-in-law, catches wind of the trip and tags along, inserting his own uninvited family to the festivities and spoiling the fun. It's perfect casting for each part: Candy as the humble and chummy father who good-naturedly eats a mountain of abuse to avoid offending his kin, Aykroyd as the dick-swinging Wall Street a-hole who isn't above taking advantage of a little insincere hospitality. John Hughes wrote the screenplay, narrowly passing on the chance to direct, and it smacks of his typical hallmarks. The humor is more than a touch over-the-top, the working class ethos front and center, the rampant sentimentality applied in extra-thick layers.

The good bits work extremely well, delivering laughs and lingering in the memory banks for decades (if you've seen this one, you'll never forget the bald bear, or the human lightning rod, or the ninety-six ounce steak dinner), but the plot is wobbly and there isn't much structure to tie everything together. It plays like a collection of themed skits, sharing a locale and a cast of characters, but rarely pressing toward a mutual conclusion. Were it not for the charismatic talents of the twin leads, _The Great Outdoors_ might fall apart completely.