Movie Review: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
John Hughes creates a near-perfect Thanksgiving film
This is my 20th blog posting and it’s Thanksgiving - so let’s talk about one of my favorite and most re-watched movies of all time: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
“Didn't you notice on the plane when you started talking, eventually I started reading the vomit bag?”
That’s from the 1988 Thanksgiving movie which is one of the best comedy films in history. I can review this one without even rewatching it. The question isn’t “Have I seen it?”, but rather “How many times?”
The answer is: at least once every Thanksgiving since I first saw it in a Boston theater back in college.
Funny but the above quote is very close to what I say to my wife when she reads me one of her articles in People magazine on the fashion trends of the British royal family (Did I just say that out loud?)
That quote is also applicable to nearly every film released since about 2019: a generation of writers has come of age knowing how to check diversity boxes, but not tell stories. Humor – especially irreverent humor – is a thing of the past. Welcome to the age where someone will be offended by Melba toast.
A film featuring half a dozen people lighting their farts on fire for 90 minutes would get five stars from the likes of Collider and Screen Rant as long as the cast looked like a box of Skittles and had “representation” from the LGBTQIA++ community. (Is LGBTQIA++ a programming language?)
A film about two straight white guys (Steve Martin and John Candy)? You can’t make THAT one today. Well – one of the white guys IS the late John Candy, who was size-inclusive. So his hand in “woke poker” would be at least a two-of-a-kind. He’d be forgiven for being a white male because he was FAT – but barely.
Two reasons make Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (“PTA”) a cinematic work of art. First – it features comedy based on relatable, observational humor. Second – it contains serious themes and character development. This is comedy, but it is not Seth Rogan’s juvenile brand of empty calorie refuse scooped out of Hollywood’s septic tank.
And – it pulls off both of these themes without being off-putting, and without causing the viewer to roll their eyes and think “Make up your mind, film! Are you a slapstick comedy or a drama that touches on deep issues?”
This is not surprising – because the filmmaker here is the late John Hughes, who literally never made a bad, boring, or unwatchable movie. Notably, he gave us the two Christmas classic Home Alone films – both of which accomplish a very similar feat as PTA, and do it successfully.
PTA combines these two story beats masterfully. The plot is a place we’ve all been: frustration and impatience with travel delays and complications. Steve Martins's character (Neal Page) connects with John Candy’s character (Del Griffith ) while trying to get home from a New York City business trip to his family in Chicago for Thanksgiving. A blizzard has canceled both their flights, and the trip home two days before Thanksgiving leads down a rabbit hole of travel mishaps. As per the title, the film follows the journey of Neal and Del via a diverted flight, an ill-fated train ride cut short by engine trouble, and the last resort of a rental car trip from St Louis to Chicago.
Hughes’s use of archetypes is genius: Del Griffith is a supremely irritating human radio station; there is no “dead air time” with him. He is always jabbering about random topics that are of little interest to anyone but esoteric audiences. Indeed his hilarious, “that’s-not-a-thing” job title reflects his arcane-ness: “Director of sales: Show Curtain Ring Division”
He is self-aware yet oblivious in this trait – as this bit of dialog hilariously delivered by Candy illustrates:
The last thing I want to be remembered as is an annoying blabbermouth... You know, nothing grinds my gears worse than some chowderhead that doesn't know when to keep his big trap shut... If you catch me running off with my mouth, just give me a poke on the chubbs...
Neal Page is a stuck-up, self-centered introvert who has no tolerance or patience for Candy’s character. Ironically – he is a marketing professional, a job which one would normally associate with a more outgoing personality. When his frustration reaches critical mass, Neal tends to rant – in an epic fashion. One of these diatribes serves as exposition to describe Del’s character:
…I've been with Del Griffith. I can take ANYTHING." You know what they'd say? They'd say, "I know what you mean. The shower curtain ring guy. Woah." It's like going on a date with a Chatty Cathy doll. I expect you have a little string on your chest, you know, that I pull out and have to snap back. Except I wouldn't pull it out and snap it back - you would. Agh! Agh! Agh! Agh! And by the way, you know, when you're telling these little stories? Here's a good idea - have a POINT. It makes it SO much more interesting for the listener!
But this is the point: Del Griffith is the real thing, he is what he appears to be. There is nothing phony about Del Griffith.
“ I'm the real article. What you see is what you get.”
Neal Page, however, is a bit more artificial. He has the classic appearance of an Andy Griffith Dad, but his personality is cold and distant to outsiders unless their personalities mesh with his own. This is a testimony to Steve Martins’s acting range. His cranky and moody comedic role is a bit different than the cartoonish over-the-top style of The Jerk that had been his wheelhouse in the past
Neal and Del are like oil and water; Del is a slob who washes his underwear in the sink of a shared hotel room, while Neil loathes using the receiver on a pay phone. (Note the sign of the times there – this is the pre-cell phone era, when people put physical coins into public pay phones to call home…which contained an aggregate germ colony from the previous 1000 people to have used it)
Del is one of those ships passing in the night – we’ve all been there – who you can’t get out of your life soon enough. You interact with them as long as you have to and move on. It might be an oversharing person sitting next to you in a doctor’s waiting room, or an annoying customer service representative.
But – when the circumstances of traveling force constant close-quarters interaction of this odd couple, it sets up the scenarios for both comedy and drama that Hughes does so well.
The humor features John Hughes’s unique brand of creativity, doubtless mixed with a healthy dose of John Candy’s well-known skill with ad-libbing. (In Home Alone, the entire funeral home dialog was improvised by Candy, and allegedly caused disruptions from staff who could not stop belly laughing) Indeed the snappy and clever script is the best part of the movie’s levity.
This is how Del Griffith described their prospects of getting a flight for the next day.
“We'd have more luck playing pick-up sticks with our butt-cheeks than we will getting a flight out of here before daybreak.”
..and their subsequent chances of getting a hotel room:
Yeah, but by the time the airline cancels this flight, which they will sooner or later, you'd have more of a chance to find a three-legged ballerina than you would a hotel room
This film gets an “R” rating based on one particular scene when Neal Page has reached his wits end with a rental car company that set him up with a non-existent vehicle. Having already been on a delayed and diverted flight and a broken down train, he takes out his frustration on a smarmy rental lady with a string of seventeen F-bombs that would raise the eyebrows of any Tourette’s patient. Heck - the mob movie Casino even told Neal Page to watch his language. This would fall flat and unfunny with a less skilled director; it would have the vibes of a sixth-grader who had just discovered curse words. But Hughes touches a nerve; we’ve ALL been there. Airports can be the most infuriating places to trigger bottled-up rage and frustration. Flight delays, long lines, lost luggage…along with big-fish-in-a-small-pond employees who can send things to new levels of difficulty. Normal, well-balanced people can grow horns and tentacles in these situations. Everyone has felt Neal Page’s pain at some point – although this was the pre-911 era. An outburst like this today would just about be an international incident.
Ira Newborn’s soundtrack does an outstanding job of both setting and reflecting the mood of crucial scenes. There is a dour, three-note chant that is reprised every time there is a delay, frustration, or exasperating travel snafu. An 80’s rap riff, complete with a DJ-style scratching of a vinyl record, accompanies Neal Page when losing all composure, repeating and remixing the phrase: “You’re messing with the wrong guy!”
Along with all this humor – there is real character development. Neil Page discovers that selfishness is not who he really is – not a man who clearly loves his family the way Neal does. He learns that people different than him might just have something to offer to which he wasn’t paying attention. He also realizes he is flawed himself; his own set of eccentricities just might be insufferable to other people.
This concept is again illustrated with Hughes’s humor and Candy’s snarky delivery of the lines:
Del: You play with your balls a lot.
Neal: I do NOT play with my balls.
Del: Larry Bird doesn’t do as much ball-handling in one night as you do in an hour!
Neal: Are you trying to start a fight?
Del: No. I’m simply stating a fact. That’s all. You fidget with your nuts a lot.
Neal: You know what’d make me happy?
Del: Another couple of balls, and an extra set of fingers?
Neal is put in his place a bit by Del Griffiths’s wit.
There is one scene in which Del Griffith is sleeping outdoors in a snowstorm in his burned-out car due to not having cash for a motel room – not even for “two dollars and a Casio”. Neal opens his motel room paid for with “$17.50 and a nice watch” – and invites Del in: “You’re going to freeze out there”
This is when both characters realize what they have in common – the love of their family above all else. They bicker about things like an old married couple, which fits because they both share with other how much they love their wives, and that is what motivates them.
In the category of stuff-you-cant-put-in-a-movie-anymore-because-its-offensive, there is a belly-laugh funny scene in which Del and Neal discover their hotel room has only a single bed – and it’s not a King size. The awkwardness with which both men approach this predicament - as a quiet part not be declared out loud - will have heterosexual men nodding their heads and chuckling. Women have no problem sharing a bed in “sleepover” scenarios, but men would rather sleep in a cat litter box than in a perfectly good King-sized bed occupied by another man. They finally do figure things out and share the bed, and in the follow-up scene, they wake up with each other - both being in a semi-awake state in which they believe they are in bed with their wives. It is PRICELESS. This is one of the most iconic shots in the film. You may need to hit “pause” until you are finished laughing.
One almost thinks that “in-universe” (that’s geek-speak for “in the world of the movie”) all the mishaps were not accidental; perhaps they were part of a larger Plan to force the conceited Neal to interact with someone like Del. Even when it appeared that they would part ways at a certain point, Forces above their pay grades made their journeys intersect again. Perhaps it’s a bit of a “Groundhog Day” scenario in which both characters are brought together to learn from each other.
And we discover facts about Del Griffith that shed light on something he is lacking; something missing in his life that Neal helps bring out. There is a flashback montage near the end of the film while Neil is riding on a subway that does an outstanding job of setting this up.
The end of the film is one that will legitimately bring a tear to your eyes – and it does NOT feel contrived or forced. All the slapstick humor seemed to be a vehicle to lighten up a serious story and legitimate character arcs which were background threads up until that point.
This is altogether a near-perfect film – a comedy with a drama lurking beneath the surface that has witty dialogue, a well-written soundtrack, and a very high “re-watchability” factor. However – this movie can be enjoyed and appreciated as just a straight-up brain-candy comedy (no pun intended) if you aren’t in the mood to ponder “the meaning of life”, so to speak. With a 90-minute runtime, the film in final analysis cannot be accused of taking itself too seriously.
If you have small children be aware of the R-rating, the blue-streak of F-bombs in one scene, and some adult humor. There is no nudity or explicit sexual content.
Happy Thanksgiving and RIP John Candy and John Hughes!
Go ahead and stream this film or buy the hardcopy DVD
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Planes, Trains, and Automobiles - stream
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles - DVD/BlueRay
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