Midway through “Vacation,” the intrepid Griswold clan unwittingly takes a dip in a lake filled with human excrement, which is roughly how most viewers will feel after enduring 90-odd minutes of this miserably unfunny, mean-spirited and just plain wrong reboot of the much-loved 1980s and ’90s National Lampoon comedy series. Corralling a new generation of family members for another ill-fated trek toward that theme-park mecca known as Wally World, this new “Vacation” leans heavily on franchise nostalgia — with multiple cover versions of Lindsay Buckingham’s “Holiday Road” theme song and token cameos for original stars Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo — but trades the earlier films’ endearing buffoonery for a cheap nastiness reminiscent of writers and first-time directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley’s “Horrible Bosses.” A trip to the corner store with this cast of characters would be an endurance test — which, with any luck, is as far as the movie’s box office returns will carry it.
