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National Lampoon's Holiday Reunion (2003) - ALL2-THANKSGIVING

November 27, 2025·1 hr·3 clips

During the 80s and 90s, any company could literally buy the National Lampoon name for a fee.

Michael E. Cullen II starts with a holiday greeting and the odd little chaos of Thanksgiving release day. He brings the crew into a movie discussion without much buildup. From there, the talk turns into a steady teardown. The hosts keep coming back to jokes that seem like they should work and just do not. One insult about a teenage girl getting 'boobs' becomes a long digression. The group cannot really make the line make sense, and that is part of the problem. It is not only rude, it is clumsy. The conversation keeps that same energy for other beats. The unannounced arrival at the house becomes another target. So does the movie's habit of leaning on culture shock. The hippie-family angle gets plenty of attention. The hosts talk through the food rule about only eating animals that died of natural causes. That leads to the turkey tuberculosis bit. The joke is treated as the kind of thing that is meant to be outrageous, but mostly just sounds absurd. Along the way, the conversation keeps drifting into side comments and quick corrections. That gives the episode a loose, lived-in rhythm instead of a polished review feel. The show spends more time reacting than outlining. By the end, the movie has been reduced to a pile of bad choices, and the hosts have had a good time taking it apart.

As heard by us

A Thanksgiving release that turns a culture-clash comedy into a blunt critique of jokes that do not hold together.

The episode reads as a Thanksgiving-set culture-clash autopsy, with unannounced arrivals, a hippie family, and jokes that keep colliding with their own logic.

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Why you'd press play

You want a Thanksgiving listen that tears into one movie's bad joke without losing the hangout feel.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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