The new Ollie’s store off Main Street in Salem has the perfect final stocking stuffer for Roanoke Christmas shoppers. It’s Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. They’re selling the 1987 John Hughes comedy on DVD for just five dollars! Besides being a terrific comedy, it’s also a holiday favorite.
The late great writer/director John Hughes left us all too early back in August of 2009. The man behind the modern Christmas movie classics Christmas Vacation (1989) and Home Alone (1990) also created a box office sensation and turned the teen comedy on its ear with 1986’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. His best film in between those three was Planes Trains, and Automobiles.
Hughes took his common theme of teen angst and transferred it to Steve Martin’s middle aged Thanksgiving traveler in this comic nightmare. A series of mishaps finds Martin’s appropriately boring named Neal Page left with only one means of getting home for the holidays: shower ring salesman Del Griffith.
Del is loud. Del is painfully obnoxious. Del is played by Hughes favorite go-to-funnyman John Candy, another John who tragically left us way too early in 1994. Candy and Martin play beautifully off each other as total opposites. Neal needs his space and draws closer to the breaking point with every minute he spends with Del. Del can comfortably share a bed and rest his hand between what he thinks are two pillows and stays calm and optimistic throughout.
The movie showcases Hughes’ knack for making the fantastic somehow plausible and treating scenes of everyday life as though he was shooting a horror movie. It also contains Hughes’ inherent tenderness, sense of fair play, and just plain nice view of people. You can be sure all will end well for Neal and Del, but boy oh boy what a long strange trip it is.
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