Mediocrity is the new black.

Enjoying Oscar-quality films has been uncool for years. Ironically, appreciating bad movies is too easy.

Cinema is the most complete form of artistic expression in the world and thus produced decades of amazing films. Then there was TV.

After years of trying to defeat television with CinemaScope, surround sound, Goobers and “Let’s go out to the lobby” jingles, for a brief spell in the ’80s films and television seem to have synthesized to produce works of art that meld the captivating obviousness of a sitcom and the elusive glow of the cinema.

Look no further than “The Great Outdoors,” an oft-forgotten footnote in the John Hughes oeuvre. Everyone’s favorite North Shore social pundit penned this 1988 ode to Joe Chicago’s inability to appreciate life away from the city’s teat. This came on the heels of the definitive work in this genre, Hughes’ own road trip manifesto, “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles,” which also is a landmark in introductory R-rated movies that parents let their kids watch. Or at least it was for me (except for when I taped “Pet Sematary” off HBO).

Interestingly, “Automobiles'” overbearingly friendly villain was played by John Candy, who plays virtually the same role in “The Great Outdoors.” Only in the latter film, his North Woods family vacation is ruined by his know-it-all investor brother-in-law (Dan Aykroyd). This consistency in character is only the beginning of Hughes’ diabolical scheme to confuse us into a television-like numbness.

Because, of course, “The Great Outdoors” has been aired a bazillion times on cable television. Which is how I saw it and how I fell in love with it. You can catch bits and pieces of it at different points in time, eventually constructing the whole movie after years of channel surfing. Other films I’ve watched like this include “Funny Farm,” “The Money Pit” and “Harry and the Hendersons.”

The problem is last week I finally watched “The Great Outdoors,” start to finish, on glorious wide-screen DVD — and seeing the film in its original incarnation changed everything.

“The Great Outdoors” is a film obsessed with blandness, mediocrity and predictability. As such it becomes undeniably gripping. Watch with ironic fervor the lame opening credits sequence as Candy sings with his family in the car. Cringe at the faux jazz music so bland it sounds like it was recorded in a meat locker by a creaky band of animatronic hepcats. Question the PG rating amid the film’s head-scratching vulgarity, embodied best by a trio of trouble-making squirrels whose conversations are conveniently subtitled.

Sketch comedy actors like Candy and Aykroyd (“Second City TV” and “Saturday Night Live” vets, respectively) are trapped in a strange circle of fame: They’re not talented enough to be remembered for any one role, but they are competent enough to be a comforting reminder of that funny guy in college algebra. They lack the consistency to be a sitcom actor like John Ritter (God bless) but have the charisma to be sufferable screen stars.

You put these Canadians in a marginally funny movie built on clumsy comedy (my favorite: the strange logic by which Candy stuffs himself with a 96-ounce steak, only to vomit upon seeing those rascally raccoons have trashed his cabin), and it essentially becomes pay-per-view. “The Great Outdoors” offers nothing you can’t find on TV.

There are some interesting things going on here, most notably the film’s stark channeling of boyhood fantasies. What other movie features that grotesque 96-ounce steak, bloodsucking leeches (cool!), a guy who has been struck by lightning 66 times and a 109-year-old man? It’s like Hughes opened up a Guinness Book of World Records for inspiration.

But seeing this movie on DVD felt cheap, like watching great “Seinfeld” episodes on TiVo. Part of the fun with “The Great Outdoors” is how it falls in your lap when you least expect it; its mediocre gifts surprise you with their pleasantness and adequacy. It is a movie for the ages because it is inextricably linked with television.

And as such it shouldn’t be seen in pristine wide-screen. Watch “The Great Outdoors” as it was intended: accidentally.4

Communication junior Kyle Smith is the PLAY film columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].

‘Outdoors’ better with commercials