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Travel (not teen) angst in John Hughes' "Planes, Trains and Automobiles"
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Steve Martin and John Candy anxiously await transport.
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The untimely death of filmmaker John Hughes this past Thursday gave many writers and bloggers an opportunity to commemorate his memorable 1980’s “Brat Pack” comedies like “Sixteen Candles” and “The Breakfast Club”. He captured teen angst in a way that set him apart from any of his exploitation-driven colleagues. However, for my money, his best and funniest work is actually a road movie, 1987’s “Planes, Trains and Automobiles”. Film critic Roger Ebert goes as far as including it as one of his top favorites in his 2005 compendium, "The Great Movies II". For me, I continue to be surprised at how much I laugh when I see this movie.
I thought that by now, surely the comic sight gags and the casting of Steve Martin and the late John Candy would automatically make this a candidate for an eighties time capsule. Instead, I have to agree with Ebert and say this film has only grown over time. The laughs are still there, but so is a somewhat more dramatic undercurrent that I likely ignored the first time I saw it. What it comes down to is a classic anti-buddy picture as two mismatched individuals are thrown together and of course, suffer one bizarre misadventure after another as they try to make it home to Chicago for Thanksgiving.
Although one would think it would have more in common with Neil Simon's "The Odd Couple", the plot actually reminds me much more of Simon's "The Out-of-Towners", and anyone familiar with that film will have a good idea of what will happen to them. They spend a night in a cramped hotel room sleeping in the same bed, endure customer-indifferent rental car clerks, suffer through a series of vehicle breakdowns, and watch one of their last hopes literally go up in smoke. As persnickety salesman Neal Page, Martin seems to be on a constant simmer just ready to boil at the most inopportune times. Candy plays the obnoxious Del Griffith, a shower curtain-ring salesman armed with an endless supply of dumb jokes and pointless anecdotes.
That both men manage to make their respective characters likeable is a testament to their appeal as comic actors. Martin is able to elicit empathy for a man uncomfortable with unpredictable circumstances. Candy goes beyond the obvious buffoon to reveal a vulnerable, lonely man made even more so by the holiday season. There is a particularly touching moment when he silently expresses his character's swelling hurt as Neal berates him for his unfunny stories. Nevertheless, it's really the comedy scenes that make this movie truly memorable, the best one involving Del's lip-synching of Ray Charles' "The Mess Around" behind the wheel of a car he is driving in the wrong direction. Classic Hughes, well missed.
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