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.
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