This is my favorite John Hughes movie and, IMHO, one of the great underrated comedies of all time. Roger Ebert explained it best when he wrote:
“It is perfectly cast and soundly constructed, and all else flows naturally. Steve Martin and John Candy don’t play characters; they embody themselves. That’s why the comedy, which begins securely planted in the twin genres of the road movie and the buddy picture, is able to reveal so much heart and truth.”
John Candy is at his best here, sweet but not saccharine, raunchy but not profane, annoying as hell, but someone you’d still love to have a beer with.
And then there are all the little details, like the credit cards Steve Martin pulls out of his wallet that have been burnt to a crisp. Martin trying to dry himself off with a washcloth in the the motel room because Candy used up all the other towels. The hick who picks them to take them to the train station.
Exquisite.
What do you think of the movie? What are some of your favorite scenes?
It’s been a very long time since I have seen this film.
The only scene I can remember is when Candy fell asleep at the wheel, and in the end, Martin ended up having to pry his fingertips out of the soft dash, while Candy stares at the steering wheel he folded in half.
I like the scene where they are finally becoming friends in the hotel room and drinking the little bottles of alcohol and for some reason John Candy is laughing in the bathroom and he opens the door to just giggle and then closes it right back.
I also like the whole scene where John Candy gets his jacket stuck on the car seat and has to drive with his knees.
Awesome movie. Gut-wrenching in its own little ways. If you really want to appreciate it, you can start by wiping that fucking dumb-ass smile off your rosy fucking cheeks!
I love the reaction scene after the Those aren’t pillows! line. I like to use the phrase “See that Bears game last week?” in all manner of uncomfortable manly situations.
I only wish my 10 year old son was old enough to watch it. He only knows Steve Martin from family trash like the Pink Panther and Parenthood. He doesn’t even know how funny Martin can be!
I also lament the same issue over another John Hughes movie - Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I’m counting the days until I can show both of these movies to my kids…
I don’t know if it is just lame nostalgia but it always seems to me that there was a golden age of comedy in the mid to late '80s of which PT&A would be a shining example. Modern comedies generally leave me cold by comparison.
The little touches like the sleeping old man whose white mice are escaping gave it the credibility of having been written by someone who’d actually travelled by Greyhound. Until David Sedaris’s bus adventures are made into a movie, it will not be easily surpassed.
By the way, Ebert recounts a sad story about John Candy in his re-review.
[quote Ebert]
“One night a few years after “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” was released, I came upon John Candy (1950-1994) sitting all by himself in a hotel bar in New York, smoking and drinking, and we talked for a while. We were going to be on the same TV show the next day. He was depressed. People loved him, but he didn’t seem to know that, or it wasn’t enough. He was a sweet guy and nobody had a word to say against him, but he was down on himself. All he wanted to do was make people laugh, but sometimes he tried too hard, and he hated himself for doing that in some of his movies. I thought of Del. There is so much truth in the role that it transforms the whole movie. Hughes knew it, and captured it again in “Only the Lonely” (1991). And Steve Martin knew it, and played straight to it.”
I love this movie. I used to watch it every year at Thanksgiving. They need to have a special edition DVD as I know there are a couple of extra scenes that they show on TV sometimes. Especially on the plane when some woman with really long hair drops it into Neal’s dinner.
I remember once when I was in college I was outside for class and I just said “What do you think the temperature is?” and a guy came back with “One.”
