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RV Robin Williams stars as Bob Munro - a soft drink company executive on the brink of getting fired due to an unfortunate incident at a company function (the movie's funniest scenes). He's a hard working guy, and isn't as close to his kids as he once was when they were younger, but the Munro family eagerly is looking forward to an upcoming vacation to Hawaii. Sadly, Bob needs to change the plans when he is required to save his job by rescuing a major merger between his company and another. Instead of fessing up to the family, Bob cancels the trip to Hawaii and rents an RV under the guise of giving them more time to spend together as they drive across the country to Colorado. Little do they know, that is where his big business meeting is taking place. Will the Munros be able to stand each other in such close quarters? Will they discover Bob's duplicity? For the first 10 minutes, RV is an awesome movie. After that, you'll wish you were watching it at home on DVD, so you could take it out of the player, whip it like a frisbee across the room, watch it smash into bits when it hits the wall, then flip on some quality cable TV entertainment like Most Haunted or Iron Chef. What promises to be a smart comedy with an edge becomes a film full of clichés, potty humor and some forced sappiness. Sure, writer Geoff Rodkey slips in a smart joke once in a while, but not often enough to make up for the lame slapstick, not-silly-enough jokes and visual gags that rely on absurdity instead of comedy (although, I have to give them some credit for being one of the very few movies to avoid having someone take a blow to the crotch to make people laugh). Forsaking the movie's opening moments of daring, Rodkey's story becomes quite predictable, and the writer never tries to add some complexity to the plot or relationships between the family members or between Bob and his co-workers. Meanwhile, Rodkey and director Barry Sonnenfeld make sure we get all of the typical elements we have seen a zillion times before including the estranged children who think Dad is a doofus, a wife (Cheryl Hines) trying to get her husband to stop being obsessed about his job and allegedly wacky hijinx on the road that are supposed to bring them all together again. Some of it works. Most of it doesn't. None of it surprises us. While some might think Williams had a Steve Martin Lobotomy for starring in this movie, RV is never as close to dreadful as Cheaper By the Dozen 2 or The Pink Panther. He does what he can to fill Bob with some fatherly compassion and show us how much he is torn between work and family, but only gets one good moment to blow us away towards the end of the film, when Bob makes his big speech, which is more like a Robin Williams stand up routine suddenly cut short to insert more sappy comments about how much everyone loves each other and blah blah blah (gotta protect the PG rating!). For the rest of the movie, Williams is just coasting along with a few moments of physical comedy on display, which makes you wish he would cut loose instead of being so bland (the guy works for a soft drink company but sounds and looks like he needs several jolts of caffeine, not exactly what you would expect from Robin Williams). No one else fills the void of craziness with some manic energy. Hines's role needs more meat to take advantage of her comic ability. Instead, she just plays a ho-hum, along for the ride character who is supposed to react to Bob's stupidity with an eye roll or mouth agape (something a person off the street could accomplish just as well). Joanne "JoJo" Levesque, playing the teen daughter, Cassie, spends the movie sneering at Williams and not much else. I guess she was signed up to put on a song in the movie. Meanwhile Josh Hutcherson, as son, Carl, has some funny moments as we watch him pump iron and act like a gangsta rapper, but the more interesting family is the comic relief foils, The Gornickes. Jeff Daniels and Kristin Chenoweth, as Travis and Mary Jo Gornicke, are given a chance to liven up the proceedings as the eager to please, cross country wandering RV family that wants very much to be friends with The Munros. Both actors find ways to make us think the characters might be a little goofy, but bring out some likable traits in each to make sure we respect and appreciate them. Would it be a cliché to say RV runs out of gas? Well, if the writer of the movie can't be bothered to come up with something original, why should I? 1 ½ Waffles (Out Of 4) Copyright 2006 - WaffleMovies.com
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