RV Starring Robin Williams

Robin Williams, Cheryl Hines, Jeff Daniels, Kristin Chenoweth
Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld
Columbia Pictures 2006
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment 2006
99 minutes

RV is a great family comedy starring Robin Williams as an overworked ad executive who decides to go on an RV vacation of sorts when he is forced to cancel his family trip to Hawaii for business reasons. This comedy DVD is in the tradition of National Lampoon Family Vacation but much, much funnier. RV is far superior to the majority of family vacation movies.

Of course, Bob Munro (Robin Williams) feels alienated from his two kids (Joanna Levesque and Josh Hutcherson) and hopes this family time together will bring them closer together. Evidently, Bob knows nothing about driving or operating an RV, something he quickly learns when he has to empty the sewage tank, an event that causes a tailgating party of onlookers and a scene right out of old faithful. This is only one of the many laugh out loud funny scenes in this movie.

Jeff Daniels plays a Jeff Foxworthy looking redneck named Travis Gornicke who spends his live RVing with his wife, Kristin Chenoweth, and family, befriends the unwilling Munros, and then spends time chasing after them in the spirit of friendship and to return the computer Bob lost and needs badly to work on a project for his hypochondriac boss so he can keep his job.

Like in any family vacation comedy DVD, Robin Williams and family suffer more than their share of comic mishaps in RV. These include raccoons in the oven, a stink bomb, an improvised waterslide down a mountain, and Williams talkin’ hood to some white homeboys. Of course, this is a family bonding through trial comedy and no filmmaker in history has been able to resist a few fart -the RV is nicknamed the rolling turd– and using poison ivy as tp jokes.

Nonetheless, RV is definitely an original comedy that relies on more than just cute kid actors and funny situations to tell its story. Robin Williams is very good in this movie (his solo piece involving wrestling the RV down a mountain is really hilarious) and director Barry Sonnenfeld was able to control some of his manic energy to keep him focused on his Bob Munro character.

RV is a really, really good family comedy and one of those comedy DVDs you will want to watch again from time to time.

Extra features include the usual useless director’s commentary, a pretty decent gag reel, some musical outtakes, and a storyboard-to-film comparison.

 

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