The Great Outdoors
Was heavily panned by critics and failed to make a profit at the box office. However, once it hit the home video market it garnered a huge following, and has since become one of the most popular summer vacation movies.,After Chet finishes the Old 96er and everyone is back at the cabin. Chet runs to the bathroom with everyone chasing him. As the camera pans out, you clearly see Dan Akroyd counting down for everyone to scream and run out of the cabin.,Roman: Good evening. How's it going? Listen, girls... uh... as your father, I feel it incumbent upon me to set the record straight on the validity of the tale which Uncle Chet shared with us this evening. I know that a terrifying story like that coming from the mouth of a recognized authority figure could be traumatizing for kids like yourselves; I know that, because I had a similar experience with my uncle Roy and a story he used to tell, about a family who went into the woods and was attacked by a band of escaped Army psychiatric patients who'd been subjected to violent, hellish, torturous behavior-modification experiments. It seems they escaped from the metal boxes the Army kept them in, found his family in the woods, fell upon them, slaughtered them and ate them. Now that story - phew - it gave me nightmares not to be believed. Well I thought that Uncle Chet's story upset you in the same way. I'm here to say that there actually is NO bear, and that all that Uncle Chet was saying was just a yarn... spinning for our... entertainment. And even if there were a bear out there, I'm in the house. To protect you. So uh... no more thinking about bears. Alright? No more thinking about unpleasant things. We're gonna close our eyes and dream about nice things. About cuddly, soft, fluffy things. Okay? Super. Good night. Sleep tight.,Subtitled conversation between two raccoons -- Raccoon #1: "Why's Jody sitting in the lake?" Raccoon #2: "You didn't hear? She got shot in the ass!" Raccoon #1: "Oh no! Don't tell me..." Raccoon #2: "Yup... She's bald on both ends now!",To receive a PG certificate the 1989 UK video was cut by 27 secs by the BBFC to remove multiple uses of the line 'Blow it out your ass'. The cuts were restored in 2003.,Featured in Siskel & Ebert: Red Heat/A World Apart/Rikky and Pete/Poltergeist III/Wings of Desire (1988),Yakety Yak
Written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller
Performed by The Coasters
Courtesy of Atlantic Recording Corp. by arrangement with Warner Special Products,It's getting so you can spot a John Hughes script from fifty miles off anymore.

"The Great Outdoors" is his, he'd have trouble disowning this one. It has his earmarks all over it:

1) Slapstick chaos ("Home Alone")

2) Teen love ("Pretty in Pink")

3) Animals with human tendencies ("101 Dalmatians")

4) Thick-headed adults (just about all his movies)

And, of course, there are laughs to be had here. Candy and Aykroyd as the feuding brothers are extremely funny and their chemistry works very well here. Faracy and Bening (!) do well as their long-suffering wives. Even Prosky serves up laughs as the campground proprietor.

But you have to feel sorry for that poor bald bear in the end (get it?).

Seven stars. Time-tested Hughes humor and a solid cast to set it off just right. Good use of raccoons, too.,