Who’s missing summer? I am but I’m not because working is nice. Still, vicarity is fun, especially with Labor Day upon us, and I decided to revisit 2006’s RV, which I haven’t seen in a lot of years. Because I’m me, though, and Taking Up Room is what it is, well…just wait.
Bob Munro (Robin Williams) used to be close to his family and it was all unbelievably cute and fun. Now everyone’s off doing their own thing, the kids don’t think Bob and his wife, Jamie (Cheryl Hines) are as cool as they used to be and would rather be off with their friends, or, as in son Carl’s (Josh Hutcherson) case, lifting weights. Bob’s hoping that the family’s upcoming trip to Hawaii will bring them closer together.
As timing would have it, however, Bob’s boss, Todd (Will Arnett) wants Bob to go to Colorado to pitch the merger of Pure Vibe with Alpine Soda. Todd’s kind of ticked at Bob anyway because his daughter, Cassie’s (JoJo Levesque) friend, Tammy (Kirsten Alter) threw a cup of PureVibe on him at the company party. Bob’s got to make a terrific pitch to the Alpine guys or he’s out on his ear and Laird (RIchard Ian Cox), the green-as-grass new hire will take his place.
So, Bob goes to Plan B, pulling up to the Munro abode that afternoon in the ugliest RV imaginable–lime green with a picture of Irv, the rental shop guy on the side and the words “RENT ME” in giant letters. If this thing hasn’t been target practice for someone it should be.
Bob is ridiculously inept at all things RV. He doesn’t know how to connect the hose to do a waste dump. He finds raccoons in the RV oven. He forgets to set the parking brake when the family makes a Wal-Mart stop and the RV ends up dragging a shopping cart down the freeway a few miles. After that, the hideous vehicle rolls away at the most inopportune times for comedy’s sake. And because the parking brake is permanently messed up.
Oh yeah, and there’s the thingie in Colorado with Alpine Soda. Bob spends several nights of the trip sneaking into campground bathrooms with his laptop to work on his proposal. It doesn’t go smoothly. At all. Among other things, Bob has to do some fast talking to make his all-important meetings and wireless reception is a bit spotty, even with his nifty circa-2000s wireless router.
Bob and his family might not be on the best of terms, but in one respect they’re absolutely united: The Gornicke family must be avoided at all cost. This cheerful bunch are full-time RVers and couldn’t be nicer, but the Munros are weirded out from the beginning and back away slowly.
Funny thing, though, the Gornickes are persistent folks, and the Munros never know when their luck will run out. And that’s after Bob drives the RV like a maniac through a road a state trooper has already told him is no-go for RVs. And the RV rolls into a lake. And Bob impossibly retreives one of the family’s bicycles from the sunk RV so that he can make a meeting with the Alpine guys because Todd says he absolutely has to come back. The Alpine guys like him better than Laird.
Have I given too many spoilers? Meh, I don’t know. No offense, anyone, but I’m kind of past caring.
On the surface it seems as if RV has got a dream cast with Williams, Hines, Kristen Chenoweth, Jeff Duncan, Will Arnett, and (very briefly) Tony Hale and Brian Howe. Robin Williams and Cheryl Hines in particular seem made for each other in terms of comedy because Williams was the master of the ad-lib and Hines not only has her own comedy chops but is used to dealing with comedians such as Larry David. “Goofy” is definitely in her wheelhouse.
And the movie has a nice premise, if a bit clichéd: Workaholic dad goes on road trip with family and finds out what’s really important in life, not to mention a raccoon or two in the RV oven.
Problem is, RV is painfully unfunny about eighty percent of the time. It tries too hard to be cute. It’s obsessed with poop jokes. The Munros even nickname the RV “The Rolling Turd”, never mind that no turd on the planet is the color of Mountain Dew.
Nothing is bad enough from a technical standpoint to place the movie in so-bad-it’s-good territory. No, it’s just cringe-y. Much as I love Robin Williams, this movie was such a huge misstep that, as Rotten Tomatoes said, it’s “a mediocre effort that not even the charisma of Robin Williams could save.”
As if to illustrate this, my son switched us to the vastly superior Mrs. Doubtfire as soon as the credits rolled on RV, and it only served to show how much of a stinker RV was, probably because Doubtfire took chances RV never allowed itself to take, it was far more memorable, and did it all without poop jokes. I’m sorry, I know that sounds horrible, but it’s pathetic.
Will I ever go on a road trip with RV again? Probably, give or take a decade or two, and since I own the movie, embarrassingly enough, there’s no hurry, but who knows when that will be. I don’t know what kind of mood I would have to be in to willingly put up with so much literal excrement.
A new Stage To Screen is coming on Wednesday, and I hope to see you all then. Thanks for reading, and happy Labor Day, everyone…
RV is available on DVD and Blu-ray from Amazon.
~Purchases made via Amazon Affiliate links found on this site help support Taking Up Room at no extra cost to you.~
If you’re enjoying what you see on Taking Up Room, please look for additional content on Substack, where you’ll find both free and subscriber-only articles. I publish every Wednesday and Saturday.
Taking Up Room 