Film: National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989)
Played by: Chevy Chase
Distinguishing features: Tendency to make large investments before actually receiving his Christmas bonus cheque; near-terminal enthusiasm; a breaking point.

Every dad just wants to get Christmas right. Chevy Chase’s Clark W. Griswold is no different. He just wants to get it so right that he has a brief psychotic episode, not helped by the fact that everything, but everything, in his life goes so spectacularly wrong. From rampaging squirrels to demon dogs to stingy bosses withholding bonuses to super-speedy sleds to finding the perfect tree to scuzzy cousins rocking up uninvited to finding that one bastard lightbulb preventing the lights (25,000 of them admittedly) from working, John Hughes and director Jeremian Chechik heap the indignities on poor Clark from the off, culminating in Chase’s fantastic rant against everything and everyone, during which he seemingly doesn’t take a breath. But Chase, never better, keeps Clark relatable and likeable throughout, equally adept at the slapstick (his pratfalls are world-class), wordplay and droll one-liners. We root for him, we want him to get it right, but most of all, we never, ever, want to go round the Griswolds for Christmas dinner.

Sample quote: “Merry Christmas! Holy shit, where’s the Tylenol?”

What we’d get him for Christmas: The ability to tell that his children, Rusty and Audrey, are played by different people in each movie (in this case, Juliette Lewis and Johnny Galecki).