Planes, Trains and Automobiles has aged better than almost any comedy of the 1980s, and the reason it still works comes down to one performance. John Candy takes a part that could have been a running gag and turns it into the heart of the picture.
John Hughes wrote and directed it, and it opened November 25, 1987, the day before Thanksgiving. It was the first time the man behind the teenage hits built a movie around grown men, and he reportedly wrote the script in five days, working from a real business trip of his own that detoured through Wichita. Both facts show on screen. The film is loose and quick, and it understands holiday travel misery the way only someone who has lived it can.
The premise fits in a sentence. A tightly wound Chicago ad man, played by Waco-born Steve Martin, gets stuck with a talkative shower curtain ring salesman, played by Candy, for three days of everything going wrong between New York and home. Hughes does nothing fancy with it. Each disaster tops the last, the two men push each other to the edge, and the movie trusts its actors to carry the rest.
Hughes was never a subtle director, and a few of his habits show their age. The synth-heavy score swells right on cue, and Neal’s wife waiting back in Chicago is barely a character. Those are small complaints. The script has a generous heart, and Hughes has the good sense to stay out of his stars’ way.
Martin is the surprise. In 1987 he was still best known as the wild man of stand-up, the guy with the arrow through his head, and audiences expected him to be the crazy one. That same year he showed them something else, first with Roxanne, his own modern Cyrano, and then here, playing it almost completely straight. He told reporters at the time that the character’s seriousness is what sets up the comedy, and he plays it exactly that way. He holds still, lets Del have the jokes, and builds the laughs out of reactions.
When Martin finally does cut loose, at a rental car counter after a long walk back from an empty lot, it’s one of the best slow-burn explosions on film. It also accounts for most of the movie’s R rating. You laugh at Neal and side with him at the same time, which is harder to pull off than it looks.
But the film belongs to Candy, because he never plays Del as the punchline. The jokes are all there. Del talks too much, tells stories with no endings and makes every bad situation a little worse. Candy lets each gag cost Del something, and you can see the cost in his face.
The key scene comes in a Wichita motel room, when Neal finally tells Del exactly what he thinks of him. A lesser actor would have played it for sulking or for one more laugh. Candy plays it with quiet dignity. Del knows he’s a lot. He likes himself anyway. “I like me,” he says, and it lands as the most honest line in the movie.
The last stretch is where the film earns its spot on the Thanksgiving rotation, and it’s better discovered than described. It could easily have turned to syrup. Candy keeps it plain, and Hughes keeps the camera on him and lets the moment breathe.
Candy came up through SCTV, the Toronto sketch show where he made his name with characters like Johnny LaRue. Hollywood mostly cast him as the lovable big guy. Hughes saw more, and two years later he wrote Uncle Buck around him. Candy died of a heart attack in 1994 while on location in Mexico, at just 43, which lends this performance an ache it didn’t have in 1987.
Martin seemed to know what he was watching. At the film’s 1987 press conference, he pointed the attention at his co-star and told the room he felt as if he had “the best seat in the house.”
The film did solid business, about $49.5 million at the domestic box office, and it has only grown since. Plenty of comedies from that era play today as period pieces. This one still works because the two men at its center feel like people, and because Candy’s Del is the kind of guy most of us have sat next to on a bad travel day and wished we’d been kinder to.
Watch it again this Thanksgiving, after the dishes are done. It’s still the best holiday comedy Hollywood has made, and Candy has never been better.
Share this:
Discover more from cravedfw
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
