Dan Bartlett (John Cusack) is a poor kid in a boy's prep school. His girlfriend Lori Cronenberg has invited him on the family Caribbean cruise with her parents and sister Ginger. He flunks his test and misses the trip to take a makeup test. His teacher gives him a break but he misses the plane anyways. He gets to Porta Rosa and makes the mistake of accepting a ride from smuggler Alphonso (Keith David) and his friends. Meanwhile, the Cronenbergs board the boat with Captain Andrew and Chris Honeywell (Ben Stiller). A hungover Dan joins MacClaren (Robert Loggia) on his boat as Mac chases after Chris.

This is so 80's with a young John Cusack and a wacky adventure. Even the gun action is so 80's with lots of shooting and nobody gets killed. It's a lesser example of one of these movies. Cusack does his best but he's essentially alone. He's perfectly lovable. I can do without the violent last act. This is mostly for Cusack fans only.

John Cusack is supposed to spend his vacation with the family of his girlfriend, Wendy Gazelle, but for various reasons he misses them. While her father, Monty Markham, and mother, Shelley Fabares, talk about how its all for the best, Miss Gazelle sulks on the airplane, on the way to an unnamed Caribbean island -- clearly Jamaica judging by the people, clearly Ixtapa judging by the buildings and landscape. Cusack trails Miss Gazelle like a hunter, running into a series of eccentrics, including loony sailboat master Robert Loggia, Jerry and Ben Stiller, and other amiable maniacs.

It's clearly PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES for the teenage audience, and it's all done most amiably in terms of the performance, but there's something mildly annoying about its episodic nature. I'm clearly not its intended audience, and it has a nostalgic value for the days for people who were teenagers when it came out, but there's little here to make it worth a second viewing.

Young Danny is following his rich girlfriend's family to the Caribbean. But suddenly he simply must take a chemistry test and cannot go with them. After they have left, he gets a leave from his professor and takes a plane to find them. But he is not quite sure where they are, and meets smugglers, crazy captains and murderers.

This is a strange role for Ben Stiller. That is all I have to say about that. This is so far removed from everything else he has done, it does not even look like the same person.

Of all the 1980s John Cusack films, this may be the least best. I hesitate to say "worst" because it is not necessarily bad. A bad Cusack film is still better than many other things you could watch. But it is rather blah, and it does not help that the love interest is completely unlikable.