That was an excellent one.

Please don't spend money on this.

Instant Favorite.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

John Candy plays Jack Chester, a burnout air traffic controller in 1985's "Summer Rental," where he takes his family to the beaches of St. Petersburg for some r & r. While the family has fun, they also clash with a champion yachtsman (Richard Crenna) and settle their differences in a sailboat race.Candy's always good as a comedic every-man and Karen Austin and Kerri Green shine as female eye candy (so you get the best of both worlds – older babe and younger babe, lol). The first half features the expected beach vacation antics while the second half focuses on the yacht race. Rip Torn plays the pirate-like companion that helps Chester compete. The film delivers just enough amusement for this kind of flick to give a marginal "thumbs up." The film runs 87 minutes and was shot in the St. Petersburg area with the opening scenes in Atlanta.GRADE: B-

Burned out air-traffic controller Jack Chester (John Candy) takes his wife Sandy (Karen Austin), teenage daughter Jennifer (Kerri Green), son Bobby (Joey Lawrence) and younger daughter Laurie (Aubrey Jene) to Florida for some much needed rest and relaxation, where, after a series of mildly amusing mishaps that threaten to spoil the vacation, they pull together as a family to settle a feud with an obnoxious local yachtsman (Richard Crenna).This mid '80s John Candy vehicle starts off very much in the style of National Lampoon's Vacation, with a series of comedic episodes in which Candy's well-meaning character repeatedly comes a cropper. The second half of the film introduces a classic underdogs storyline that, while not exactly original or particularly funny, provides lots of wholesome, feel-good entertainment guaranteed to put a smile on the face.Candy is his usual affable self and handles the material like a pro, Austin looks uncannily like Vacation's Beverly D'Angelo (which I suspect was deliberate, given the film's other similarities), Crenna is suitably loathsome, and jail-bait Green, teen up-skirt queen of '85, doesn't flash her knickers, but does look rather fine in her bikini. Rip Torn also puts in a fun turn as pirate restaurateur Scully, who teaches Jack a thing or two about sailing.Profanity and nudity are at a minimum (a running joke about a woman's breast implants is as rude as it gets, and she is only ever seen topless from behind), while a potential sub-plot about Sandy cheating with another man is notably dropped (one can definitely feel its presence), making the film suitable viewing for the whole family.

Jack Chester, an overworked air traffic controller, takes his family on vacation to the beach. Things immediately start to go wrong for the Chesters, and steadily get worse. Jack ends up in a feud with a local yachtsman, and has to race him to regain his pride and family's respect.....It's the eighties, John Candy is the head of the family, and they go on holiday, and bump into special guest star Richard Crenna, and you get exactly what you would expect, a fun breezy comedy were Candy gets into all kinds of hi jinks.Things go awry when Candy puts a hole in Crennas boat and he forces them to move out of their summer home. Candy challenges bets him he will win the regatta, and if he wins, he gets to stay.So they get help from Rip Torn, a hilarious Scotsman, and the most uncomfortable playmate ever. And the film is ready to serve.If you've seen Reiners other movies from this era, you know what to expect.Its enjoyable fluff, something that you could watch from time to time, and forget it straight after.

The three stars are only because John Candy turned in a very game effort and was actually quite funny, only to be undone by one of the most preposterous plots ever. Indeed this movie was rather sloppily constructed and edited from start to finish, and it appears the producers were absolutely all-out to come up with a whopping 86 minutes of material. The talents of Richard Crenna and Rip Torn are completely wasted, and I'm still trying to figure out what the John Larroquette character was all about. This is just incredibly inept stuff from a man, Carl Reiner, whom I've generally admired through the years. It's one thing to direct a flop, but it's another to lend your support to something as astonishingly stupid as the second-half boat race in this film. I mean,your basic Tom & Jerry cartoon makes more sense...at least the cat is chasing the mouse, and that's kind of a story. I actually watched the second half of this movie again, since perhaps I was being too harsh. Hardly. If anything, I'm being too easy when I say that the entire boat race sequence might be the dumbest thing ever released on an unsuspecting American public. In fact, that scene is so bad it's surprising the country has lasted another 25 years. It's a breathtakingly awful sequence that makes me feel as if my IQ has been stripped 50 points overnight. Warning: If you must watch this movie turn it off the second the boats line up for the regatta.