Starring: John Candy, Steve Martin, Laila Robbins, and Michael McKean
Directed by: John Hughes
Rated: R (really, MPA?)
Streaming on: Paramount+ and Pluto TV
First Impression: Greetings, all! It is November, so that means settling down with family for Thanksgiving, and I decided to review my favorite movie about Thanksgiving: Planes, Trains and Automobiles. This John Hughes classic is the quintessential Thanksgiving film; it is about travel, it is about family, and it is about unexpected friendship. It is my favorite John Candy and Steve Martin performance. The chemistry these two great comedians have together is unmatched in the buddy comedy genre, which Hollywood has done to death.
When you think about the holiday season, Thanksgiving usually gets overlooked. Between Halloween and Christmas, Thanksgiving usually gets the redheaded middle-child treatment. We spend most of Thanksgiving obsessing about the meal or the football game and thinking of creative ways to avoid talking politics with certain family members.
Hollywood has usually ignored Thanksgiving and left it to TV to highlight the holiday. Some TV shows, like King of the Hill (“Happy Hanksgiving”), Friends (“The One with All the Thanksgivings”) and Modern Family (“Three Turkeys”), feature it, but when it comes to movies, the cupboard is quite bare. So I personally want to give thanks for a movie like Planes, Trains and Automobiles because it captures the essence of Thanksgiving travel: the stress, the anxiety and the hijinks that arise when trying to get home for the holiday.
The plot of the film is quite simple. Steve Martin plays a no-nonsense ad executive named Neil Page, who is in New York for meetings two days before Thanksgiving. As he tries to get to the airport to return to his family in Chicago, he meets a loud, obnoxious but endearing shower curtain ring salesman, Del Griffith, played by John Candy. As both men try to get to Chicago for the holiday, they encounter mishap after mishap that leads them on a journey involving, you guessed it, Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
This is a movie that, in my opinion, the whole family can enjoy. The only reason I believe it received an R rating is a scene in which Steve Martin swears for a minute straight because of the incredibly bad luck he’s had throughout the film. Another cool aspect is the interesting side characters Martin and Candy encounter. Their limited screen time doesn’t matter, as these characters keep your attention and stay with you throughout the film.
In conclusion, make it a new tradition this Thanksgiving to watch Planes, Trains and Automobiles. As a yearly tradition, it never disappoints, and the ending gets you every time.