THE INDISPENSIBLES – #6: PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES
Planes, Trains and Automobiles is my absolute favourite Christmas movie. I watch it every Christmas Eve. Yes, I know that it is set around and on Thanksgiving, but we Brits don’t have that festive holiday over and the film looks, feels and works as a Christmas movie so I’m sure you’ll forgive me on this, right?
I consider it to be one of the funniest, if not THE funniest, film I have ever seen. Ghostbusters is its closest rival. I judge this on the grounds that I have seen Planes, Trains & Automobiles a ridiculous amount of times, and I know what is coming like I know the back of my own hand through frequent viewing, yet I laugh uproariously each and every time. It is a comedy seeping in confidence because, deep down, it knows that a truly great, timeless, effective comedy works on the theory that if it is perfectly cast and soundly constructed, then all else will flow naturally. And there is, it is said, nothing greater than a ‘natural’ comedy high. This film knows it has ticked all the right boxes and so it sits back and lets you come to it, instead of bouncing deliriously from weak gag to mediocre gag in need of your attention. Disaster Movie and your siblings, please note!
Steve Martin and John Candy are as perfectly cast as two actors could possibly be in their respective roles. They don’t just ‘play’ characters; they embody them to the point that you see them in other movies and in other roles, but you’re always drawn back to recalling them as these characters. Thanks to them, you can close your eyes and imagine their characters in their teens or as old men or, just like with De Niro and Grodin in Midnight Run, a whole host of “natural” constructs outside of the events of this movie.
As a result of this, the comedy within Planes, Trains and Automobiles – which begins securely planted in the twin genres of the ‘road movie’ and the ‘buddy movie’ – is able to reveal so much heart and truth and eventually become so, so, so much more then we could ever have anticipated.
Steve Martin plays Neal Page, a Chicago advertising man of great self-confidence, prosperity and anal-retentiveness. John Candy plays Del Griffith, a travelling salesman from Chicago who sells shower curtain rings. He is over-weight, not particularly well-read, unhygenic and covered in layers of mismatched clothing. Both of these men are in Manhattan two days before Thanksgiving, and both want to get home for the holidays. They find themselves in each other’s company, sharing a common problem. Together they will endure every indignity that modern travel can inflict upon its victims. What will torture them even more, in Neal’s eyes at least, is that with every attempt to step closer to their respective homes, they become more and more trapped in each other’s company. Del wants only to please. Neal wants only to be left alone. The tension can only but build!
John Hughes, who wrote, directed and produced the film, was one of the most prolific filmmakers of the 80s only to disappear into the world of script-doctoring, low-key producing roles and rare directing jobs on kid’s films when success started to escape him, before eventually disappearing all together. When experts look back over the decade of the 80s, they all too often forget to push the label of “great” in the direction of Mr Hughes. And this is a shameful embarrassment in itself because he is the man behind the gem that was The Breakfast Club, everyone’s ‘naughty’ childhood favourite Weird Science, the undisputable classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and the box office juggernaut that is Home Alone (and it’s resulting, admittedly awful, franchise). His teen comedies, especially the aforementioned Ferris Bueller and Breakfast Club, are miles more inventive than modern teen movies, tackling subject matters as varied as fear of adulthood, the pressure of adhering to social statuses and bullying/being bullied.
The buried story engine that drives Planes, Trains and Automobiles is not one of a slowly growing friendship or odd-couple hostility (devices a lesser film might have employed in the wake of Neil Simon’s classic stage play/subsequent movie, The Odd Couple, starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau… which, in an ironically round-about way a sequel to that subsequent movie starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau employs such devices and is all the “lesser” for it!), but empathy. It is all about understanding how the other bloke feels! We can see that the character of Del was born with empathy; he identifies with Neal’s problems and tries where possible to assist. Neal, on the other hand, spends the movie trying to peel off from Del, and failing; Del spends the movie having his feelings hurt and then coming through for Neal anyway.
The movie could have been a shouting match like that aforementioned sequel to The Odd Couple, ten years later. It is not, as Hughes is more subtle then that. The key early scene that proves this takes place in the motel room they have to share, when Neal explodes, telling Del his jokes stink, his stories are not interesting and he would rather sit through an insurance seminar than listen to any more of the fat man’s pointless anecdotes. Look at Candy’s face fall. He shows Del as a man hurt and saddened – and not for the first time. Later he remembers how the most important person in his life once told him he was too eager to please, and shouldn’t always try so hard. Something the majority of the audience, I know I do, instantly identifies with and at this point, Del wins our hearts, and the movie is set up as more than a comedy. But a comedy it is at heart.
Don’t believe me? What about the “That’s not a pillow!” scene? No? What about Del getting his coat stuck whilst driving the car down the freeway at high speed in the middle of the night – a masterstroke of performance and editing if ever there was one? Nope? Okay, let’s go with the Neal’s verbal symphony for the word ‘fuck’, to which the person he is speaking to (the incomparable Edie McClure) has a two-word answer that supplies a fantastic punchline to an already stellar gag: “You’re fucked!”
So is it just a comedy or a comedy at heart or a comedy with heart? I say the latter. A comedy with a whole heap of heart! *Spoilers Lay Ahead* The last scenes of the movie carry the emotional payoff we have been awaiting all along. There is true poignancy in the scene where Neal finds Del waiting alone on the train platform after uncovering the travelling salesman’s secret heartache while thinking back over their ‘adventure’ on his way home. The true, heart-breaking scene, and real emotional punchline, is in the film’s final seconds as Hughes closes in on John Candy’s face as his character experiences the warmth of a family’s ‘embrace’ for the first time in a long time. If ever there was a film, and in particular a scene, that revealed what a hugely under-rated serious actor John Candy was, and how trapped he was by his own superb comedic ability, then Planes, Trains & Automobiles would be that film and it’s finale would be that scene! *Spoilers over*
Planes, Trains & Automobiles is touching, hilarious and genuinely magnificent. Every Christmas Eve I sit with a few bottles of Corona, a pack of smokes and a tin of honey-roasted nuts and I embrace it and, every time without fail, I sob with laughter for the most part but sob with real, earned emotion by the time we freeze-frame on Candy’s lovely, warm, hugely-missed face!
4 Responses to “THE INDISPENSIBLES – #6: PLANES, TRAINS & AUTOMOBILES”
Watched this again tonight after watching seeing the article and re-watching Wall-E, was in a heart-warming mood and needed something to keep that momentum going!
It’s a fab film isn’t it? Absolutely perfect for this time of year too!
This is one of the all time greats. Glad you said you well up because it gets me very time too. Where are you John Hughes? Where is our bluray with some of those 3 hours of out takes and deleted scenes?
What a great review, I am glad you pointed out that it’s not a Christmas movie. I was getting ready to yell out – THOSE AREN’T PILLOWS!” . Still, it is about going home for the holiday(s). This movie is such an emotional roller coaster, it makes me want to watch it again and again. It such a thrill to see people outside the U.S. enjoy it too.
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