This paper concerns the variation bounds and continuity of the maximal function \(M_\Phi f(x)=\underset{s+t>0}{\underset{s,t\ge 0}{\sup }}\Phi (s+t)\int _{x-s}^{x+t}|f(y)|dy,\ \ \ x\in \mathbb {R}, \) where \(\Phi :(0,\infty )\rightarrow (0,\infty )\) is a measurable function, which contains some classic maximal operators as its prototypical examples. The variation boundedness and continuity of \(M_\Phi \) is established under a more restrictive condition on \(\Phi \) . The main results extend some known ones and provide a large class of maximal operators which possess the variation boundedness and continuity.