I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not (2026)

Director: Marina Zenovich

Cast: Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Beverly D’Angelo, Goldie Hawn

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Might have made a point of seeing it when everybody else did, but I cut the cord like an idiot and had to wait for a month for it to show up on Max.

Did I Like It: It’s easy to make a hatchet job out of anything related to Chase. He’s eagerly pissed people off for years, and there’s probably somebody out there who hasn’t yet learned that he is often difficult.

I’m not prepared to say the film goes deeper than that, as Chase does occasionally come off as sympathetically broken, but he also never seems unaware that he is being watched. He deals out his prickliness in carefully measured doses. It feels believable, but manageably believable.

Here’s the real problem I have with the whole affair. In the section of the film on Community and his eventual firing, it is depicted as if Dan Harmon—creator of the show—wrote a bit of about Chase’s character doing a Black-face Señor Wences ventriloquism act, that was only made worse by the character’s asian (read: yellow-face) wife, played by Chase’s left hand, and that was the incident which led to him saying things which necessitated likely half-hearted apologies and leaks to the Hollywood Reporter. It also indicates that after the fight between Harmon and Chase occurred, Chase still insisted that Harmon continue to run the show.

Not true.

Harmon was fired after the fight—to my knowledge, it’s never been confirmed that his firing was due to the Chase problem, but it might have been—Chase continued with the show into season 4, and the incident occurred during the production of that season, without the involvement of Harmon. If the filmmakers and interviewees got that wrong—or, worse yet, fudged the timeline through intention or expediency—then I can’t help but wonder what else they got wrong.

This is all to say that I would really like a Community movie as soon as possible. Please and thank you.

Vegas Vacation (1997)

Director: Stephen Kessler

Cast: Chevy Chase, Beverly D’Angelo, Randy Quaid, Ethan Embry

Have I Seen it Before: The film holds a certain amount of legendary status in our family, although not for any reason beyond the circumstantial. Between 1994 and 2000, my family and I made at least four, and potentially more (I remember one summer alone we made three trips alone) to Vegas. It was that period—Chase even mentions it in the film—when Vegas was experimenting with being a family destination. We could ride roller coasters while Pop engaged in what might be called a gambling addiction if he didn’t seem to be somewhat skilled.

Our average rate of visiting the city was so frequent, that it was almost inevitable that we were there when this was filming. The film itself is sort of weird memory burned into my brain, but the moment I looked across the casino at the MGM Grand and saw the man who once was Fletch and would one day be Pierce Hawthorne between takes near the Keno room, dressed in full Clark Griswold regalia.

The legend continues from there. I had all but forgotten about the film and my brief brush with Chevy. Cut to last fall and I’m visiting the parents. Apparently, they had bought copies of the DVD in bulk to hand out as prizes when friends come over to play poker. Rolling my eyes, I got a copy for free.

Did I Like It: The film is perhaps a perfect example of medium ambitions not remotely fulfilled. Clearly, it would not be a controversial opinion to say that National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983) and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989) are the ones we’ll see in obituary b-roll for Chase one day. I’ve never been that enamored of the Griswold’s all together, so while I can’t share that disappointment, I can understand it. The franchise has certainly taken a step down when John Hughes is nowhere to be found in the credits.

But it goes beyond that. Produced by Jerry Weintraub, this feels like the first pass at a commercial for the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, before he finally found the right vehicle for such an endeavor in Ocean’s Eleven (2001) and its sequels. I honestly think Chase could have reached for a comeback with a return to Fletch, but given the film on display here, a return to any character at this point would have been similarly anemic.

The film isn’t without its charms, though. There are several points where Chase seems to be emulating my father. A general audience might find a family breakfast interrupted by a sudden trip to the Craps table to be not terribly relatable, but I’m not one of those people. My dad may not have Tarzan-ed his way across the Hoover Dam, but that’s more because we didn’t really go see the sights when we were in the area. We laugh in my house about Rusty’s (Embry) adventures as Nick Poppageorgio, but we laugh because had I found my way into a fake ID, it’s only a mild exaggeration. “I do not require them” is a line repeated often growing up. A film can move beyond the realm of criticism if it can hit a group of people at the right time.

And yet, a couple of laughs do exist. Primarily they rest with supporting players. Wallace Shawn as a pernicious blackjack dealer is worth a chuckle or two, but I can’t help but laugh at the brief moment we’re treated to Toby Huss as a Frank Sinatra impersonator with a plan.