Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) Review

I watched this movie for the first time on Christmas Day in my dad's garage by myself wrapped up in blankets. I've heard watching Planes, Trains and Automobiles around the holidays is a lot of family's tradition and I can now see why. I’m still surprised that this was my first viewing after all these years.The movie has been out for almost forty years, so there isn't a need for me to describe the plot, but maybe there are more people like me out there that live under a rock.

An arrogant city slicker, Neal, played by Steve Martin, and a salt of the earth Midwesterner, Del, played by John Candy become travel companions after their flight is diverted then canceled as they try to reach Chicago from New York in time for Thanksgiving. Each mode of transportation is blocked and insane obstacles are thrown at them. One step forward, two steps back. Murphy’s Law at its best.

What stood out to me was how active the film moved. The characters were never concerned about the past or the future, just about the current problem at hand. This story only could’ve worked as a movie where action and urgency are everything.

Apparently, the first cut of Planes, Trains and Automobiles was three hours and forty-five minutes long with many other subplots running around and what I assume was runaway comedy between the leads. Sometimes the music was a little melodramatic and distracting with odd cutaways to Neal’s wife at home, played by Laila Robbins, dramatically looking sad out the window. After reading about the much longer cut and rewrites, these flaws don’t come as a surprise as well as the random burglar who breaks into their motel room and steals the cash out of their wallet which didn’t pay off as well as it could’ve.

All that said, the chemistry between Neal and Del was hilarious, believable and endearing. The best comedies are the ones that make you laugh and cry and possibly reevaluate how you interact with strangers. John Candy as Del especially held my attention. He was just so good. Sincere, funny and honest. My favorite scene was the montage of him selling shower rings as fashion to people in the mall to earn extra money. And who could forget his monologue that has been parodied by shows like in Family Guy season seven episode four. Steve Martin and John Candy heightened John Hughes’ material to where it needed to go.

John Hughes’ movies are always fun and unexpectedly smart. What Roger Ebert said in his Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) review resonated with me, “Hughes’ comedies always contain a serious undercurrent, attention to some sort of universal human dilemma that his screenplay helps to solve…. The buried story engine of “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” is not slowly growing friendship or odd-couple hostility (devices a lesser film might have employed), but empathy. It is about understanding how the other guy feels.”

Like Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day, Neal is not in on the joke. He can’t just go with the flow like Del suggests. In the first scene of the movie, Neal impatiently sits at a conference room table with a colleague waiting for his boss to make a decision on new proposed marketing materials. He needs to catch a plane and feels his boss is wasting all of their time. Of course, the boss decides to wait to decide on the project until after the holidays. It’s easy for us to identify with Neal, we've all been there. We are him. By the end, it’s clear that the character’s worldview is self-centered and we get teary eyed when he makes the shift.

Parts of the movie were predictable, but welcomed. When I watched another obstacle fall in front of Neal and Del, I said “Of course," laughing and enjoying every moment of it. This is a movie that thrives on the how rather than the what with a strong beating heart, something comedies lack today, if they even made comedies.