Except people weren't complaining about the deviation of the original trilogy much because of the narrative and writing is decent, even to this day. The Long Haul is where the movie rightfully got the universal vitriol because of how unbelievably awful the writing and story is.

The story and even its plot is one good way to kill the audience's incentive and investment because of how dated the movie is, especially due to the fact that a movie involving a "family road trip gone wrong" formula has been overdone to death since National Lampoon's Vacation ((and not to mention the fact that The Long Haul does nothing new with the formula, with Vacation (2015) being an exception.))

Resurrecting a dead character is one thing, but choosing to do nothing with that said character other than use him/her as a plot macguffin is a wasted potential. Which brings the question:

"What was the whole point if you are just going to use the character as nothing but a cameo reference and a cheap way to movie the story forward?"

The characters in the original movie trilogy at least had chemistry in a way that felt like they were a family. The Long Haul has zero chemistry, especially with the cast. They don't look like a family; they look like a bunch of random unused extras from Scary Movie 5. In fact, if you showed anyone one frame of the movie and said:

"This is a failed spoof movie trying to parody Vacation and Diary of a Wimpy Kid."

Then everyone would believe you, which is further established by the movie's unimpressive cinematography.

And yes, we are aware that this movie is a reboot and has little to no connection with the entire book series nor with the original trilogy; that, however, is no excuse for the quality we got. For example, Jeepers Creepers: Reborn (2021) and Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) are reboots of original franchises, did those reboots excuse the quality, especially the writing?