The Griswolds are hitting the road—and absolutely nothing is going according to plan. Determined to give his family the perfect summer vacation, relentlessly optimistic patriarch Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) packs wife Ellen and kids Rusty and Audrey into the family station wagon for a cross-country drive from Chicago to California’s Walley World. What follows is a spectacularly disastrous odyssey of wrong turns, car trouble, questionable relatives, roadside catastrophes, and increasingly unhinged determination.