Directed by: Clay Tarver
Starring: John Cena, Lil Rel Howery, Yvonne Orji, Meredith Hagner
The universal message that: “everyone can be friends with anyone else, no matter the differences” has been well established long before this movie. Repeating this truth in such a weird way in this movie is absolutely not necessary.
First of all: this movie is supposed to be a comedy (of some kind), but it is not fun at all. There are a few comical moments, but that is so marginal and so unnatural.
Two couples meet each other somehow during a vacation in Mexico. After one crazy week of hangouts it’s time to go home. One couple wants to “forget Mexico” while the other wants to be “friends forever.” This “friends forever” couple is insisting on a long term friendship and they find a way to discover where the other couple will be having their wedding weekend with their large (and very conservative) family. In the end, after so many tense moments during the wedding weekend, they actually will be “friends forever”, but the way to this outcome is not easy.
To spend an hour and a half trying to explain something everybody already knows, and has already seen countless times is just a waste of time and money. Even a better screenplay and a much humorous story will not work out when you expect John Cena to make you laugh. John Cena cannot make you laugh, not now, not ever, period.
Deeper analysis, though, of the hidden messages (if there are any) may give some reason to watch this movie and not feel regret that you just wasted an hour and a half of your lifetime watching “Vacation Friends”.
For example, a black couple and white couple can be close and can become friends. That’s okay.
Or a white couple can crash the wedding of the black couple and not get rejected by the conservative family of black couple- not very possible, but still okay.
Or a white guy handing his own gun to a black guy, telling him, “have it. I trust you. I know that you are not gonna hurt me.” That is also a very positive symbol of the racial tensions happening in our modern world.
If the presentation of those messages was where this film was aiming, then that is one very decent reason for it existing.
But if this movie just wants to make you happy and make you laugh- the target was missed completely.
