Saturday, April 04, 2009

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.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Agreed.
It's one of those movies that you really enjoy as a teen, but then can't quite get into as an adult.
Still, Candy and Martin are at the top of their games here.

(Another John Hugues movie that I remembered very fondly but fell flat when I watched it again a few years ago was Pretty in Pink.)

FKL

Jared said...

I can't believe I'm saying this about an 80's movie, but do you have to look at this movie as a "period piece," just like Psycho or Casablanca?

Not saying it makes the travel difficulties any funnier, but travel wasn't nearly as common still as the late 90's and 2000's

DrHeimlich said...

Yikes... a movie I can remember being in theaters is now possibly a "period piece?" Scarier still, there might be some truth in the idea.

Roland Deschain said...

I thought this movie was much funnier when I was younger...but then when I saw it I was 12 and swearing like that was just funnier in general. I still find it amusing, but not nearly as funny as I did then. (I'm slightly less juvenile now.)

But consider two things: think of how just "averagely" funny it is how you saw it - on DVD. Now...consider it edited for television. That was just painful.

Also, a brief reality check. "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" is frakking nonstop laugh a minute fun compared to the John Hughes of today. Let's recap his last 15 movie writing efforts, shall we?

Drillbit Taylor
Beethoven's 5th
Maid in Manhattan
Home Alone 4
Beethoven's 4th
Just Visiting
Beethoven's 3rd
Reach the Rock
Home Alone 3
Flubber
101 Dalmatians
Miracle on 34th Street
Baby's Day Out
Beethoven's 2nd
Dennis the Menace

The only one that I will give any credit to is 101 Dalmatians. That is the ONLY one that I wouldn't call an unmitigated pile of crap. This is one of the few times that it is easily provable that someone has not been funny...IN ANY WAY...in a loooooooong time.