This Chevy Chase Sponsored Instagram Post Is Sadder Than Getting Denied at Wally World
It’s not like Chevy Chase hasn’t taken the money and ran like the wind in recent years. He’s been shilling the low-rent “35th Anniversary Christmas Vacation Legacy Box LIMITED EDITION” on his Instagram account, selling scraps of old SNL costumes on his website and cashing checks for quick cameos in low-budget movies like The Christmas Letter.
But his latest cash grab is somehow sadder, mainly because he no longer seems up to the task. In an Instagram Reel posted earlier today, Chase is selling the virtues of Kalahari Resorts, a loose network of indoor waterparks located in cold-weather locations around the Midwest.
Fair enough. The Chase brand is certainly associated with vacations. But what can we make of this home (I’m guessing home — he sure didn’t take it at the Kalahari) video in which the SNL veteran needs half a dozen jump cuts to sputter his way through 12 seconds of copy? He slurs his way through “Kalahari Resorts” — words you’d think his sponsor would want to be enunciated — and his final line, “probably more than a grown man should,” finds Chase struggling to pronounce “grown man.”
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At least Chase looks like he’s having fun, mugging like a madman while telling us Kalahari has “no moose out front to tell you the park’s closed.”
But the struggle appears real for Chase. The number of edits in his 12 seconds as pitchman indicates he couldn’t deliver more than a few words at a time, or maybe pauses in between the phrases were simply too long to leave in. Was this Reel slapped together so hastily that no one cared if Chase was garbling his lines? Or is this patchwork edit the result of multiple takes, representing the best Chase can do?
Chase’s health hasn’t been the greatest in recent years, with heart problems sending him to the hospital in 2021 and a fall in late 2023 landing him in a wheelchair for months. He alarmed fans a few weeks ago with an Instagram post that suggests he took yet another tumble.
If Chase is enjoying a little extra cash by trading in on past successes like Vacation, then godspeed. But endorsements like this one make me wish Chase could take a real vacation and enjoy his retirement years in peace.
