Summer Rental

Though Candy greatly underplays Jack Chester, a beet-red seer-sucker summer renter, his genial humor and collaboration with Reiner make Summer Rental a small pleasure. [12 Aug 1985]

Summer Rental is a wan but good-natured hot-weather comedy, with a big debt to National Lampoon's Vacation plus a few nice touches of its own.

Director Carl Reiner, an old comedy pro, does well enough with the comedy's dumb but funny big-bust and jock-strap jokes. [09 Aug 1985, p.D]

This forced comedy feels too long, although John Candy's unique manner sometimes overcomes Carl Reiner's flat direction.

Summer Rental is the kind of movie that could make you wish you had poison ivy -- at least the scratching would occupy your mind. [10 Aug 1985, p.D7]

It's hard to figure how the combination of director Carl Reiner, comedian John Candy and a movie with the title Summer Rental could come to nothing. [10 Aug 1985, p.D7]

The indignities inflicted on the Chester family by writers Jeremy Stevens and Mark Reisman are barely clever enough to sustain a half-hour TV show. Carl Reiner directed this tepid farce, as if half asleep. [26 Aug 1985, p.62]