Too Close to Home

I've seen my share of John Hughes movies, but until recently, Planes, Trains & Automobiles had not been one of them. It being a Thanksgiving movie, perhaps this wasn't the time of year to be watching it, but I felt in need of a comedy to break up some of the more serious and dark stuff I'd been watching.

Unfortunately, I didn't find the movie to be that much of a comedy. Oh, Steve Martin and John Candy are both great. Yeah, so each of them is maybe doing their "schtick" a little more than playing a truly different character, but hell, it's funny "schtick." This is why we liked them in other movies. (Well, why I liked them anyway.) But they weren't making me laugh much during this movie. And by about halfway through the film, I think I zeroed in on why.

Travel difficulty is not an inherently funny premise. Put simply, travel sucks. Even when a trip is normal, you waste an entire day, cram into small spaces with annoying strangers, and suffer tension and or boredom. And when you do have problems on a trip? Well... sadly, this movie isn't all that much of an exaggeration.

Has my car ever burst into flames? No. But I personally know someone that has happened to. She called me on the phone minutes after it happened. I've been bumped from flights. I've had lost luggage. I've had messed up rental car reservations. I've had weather delays. I shared hotel rooms -- even a hotel bed on an occasion or two. And as a result of all this, I found that I couldn't laugh much when I saw this stuff happening to Steve Martin's character. The movie seemed built on the premise that we'd all sit back and laugh at the poor guy, but I too often just saw the poor guy and empathized with him.

And then, even if none of that were a factor, even if I was able to find everything funny, a movie with that premise has nowhere to go, no appropriate ending to reach. It's supposed to be about a neverending, horrible travel experience. But it can't be neverending -- eventually, you have to let him off the hook. And what's more, it's an 80s comedy, so it has to have a happy ending. Worse, a sappy one. Aw shucks, we find out that John Candy's character has nowhere to go for Thanksgiving, so Steve Martin takes him in. Am I supposed to be reaching for a hanky? Why haven't you had any jokes for the last 10 minutes of your comedy movie?

By this point, you're probably expecting me to give a rock bottom grade to this movie. But here's the part where I circle back around to how great John Candy and (particularly) Steve Martin are. They managed to wring a few laughs out of me even in the midst of a movie I wasn't really enjoying. The opening sequence of the competition for a cab is great (not just for the Kevin Bacon cameo). The single scene loaded with a stream of profanities (that earned the movie an R rating when nothing else in it would otherwise warrant more than a PG) is perfectly placed and executed. "You're going the wrong way!" "How do they know where we're going?"

The movie is not utterly devoid of laughs. But there are far better efforts out there for any given person involved, from Hughes to Martin to Candy, to any of the other actors that show up in bit parts. I rate it a C.

If I'm looking for a thematically appropriate movie this Thanksgiving, I'll find something else.