Robin Williams, Peter O’Toole, Rick Moranis, Jimmy Cliff, Twiggy, Adolph Caesar, Eugene Levy, Joanna Cassidy, Andrea Martin, Brian Doyle-Murray, Joe Flaherty, Robin Duke, and Mary Gross are among the actors fighting for elbow room in this Harold Ramis comedy; it doesn’t display an ounce of planning or simple craftsmanship (the Jamaican locations are photographed to look like the banks of Lake Calumet), but with a cast like that, it can’t help but have its moments. Williams, the titular star, is a retired fireman who helps islander Cliff save his resort hotel from Arab land grabbers (and yes, it took four credited writers to come up with that story), but no one is much interested in the plot, and the film quickly becomes a series of loosely related sketches lampooning vacation life (as in National Lampoon’s Vacation, directed by Harold Ramis). Moranis and Levy get most of the laughs as a pair of geeky business partners (they manufacture smoked meats) desperately on the make for beach bunnies; Williams is saddled with a lot of soggy insult humor that doesn’t really let him show his gifts.
