Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

With Thanksgiving coming up, it's one of the busiest travel holidays in the US. With that in mind, I scheduled a post on a movie that's set around Thanksgiving and that I saw in one of its numerous airings on PlutoTV (I think on their 80s channel, although it might have shown up on one or another of their movie channels): Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. As of this writing it's also available on their on-demand service, although of cours it has some ad breaks.

THe movie opens up in New York on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Neal Page (Steve Martin) is an advertising man based out of Chicago who is in New York with a business associate trying to do some sort of deal, that is unfortunately going longer than expected. Del has been hoping to get on the 6PM flight home to Chicago and his wife and family. Because the meeting runs long, he has to rush to get a taxi, and everybody else has the same idea, with another guy basically stealing what Neal thinks is his taxi.

Eventually Neal gets to the airport, and whom does he run into but the guy who took his taxi. That guy, Del Griffith (John Candy) is a traveling salesman in the field of bathroom fixtures, specifically shower curtain rings. Worse, the two are on the same flight to Chicago, and wind up being seated next to one another because Neal can't get his usual upgrade to first class. And for poor Neal, he finds that Del is exceedingly chatty, much too much for Neal's tastes.

And if things aren't bad enough, they're about to get much worse. A snowstorm has come up, pounding O'Hare Airport in Chicago, and forcing the closure of the airport and the consequent diversion of all flights to the airport. The flight that Neal an Del are on gets sent to... Wichita, KS. Now, you'd think they'd land early, someplace east of Chicago, but no. Who knows when the weather is going lift, allowing flights to take back off and head for Chicago? It might just be easier to drive there.

But it's also late at night, and none of the car rental counters are going to be open on such short notice, and even if they are, they wouldn't have enough cars for everybody on the flight to get one and drive to Chicago. So people are going to have to spend the night in Wichita, and wouldn't you know it, but Neal and Del wind up heading to the same motel. And there's only one room left at that motel, so they're going to have to share a room.

It's the beginning of a long series of adventures that sees the odd couple mostly together trying to get back to Chicago, with Del being well-meaning but in many ways incompetent, to the point that he's seriously pissing Neal off, never mind putting the two of them in serious danger at times. Everything that can go wrong does, comedically so, but in this sort of movie you have to expect that the two of them are going to wind up having some sort of reconciliation.

It's easy to see why Planes, Trains, and Automobiles was a big box-office hit when it was released back in 1987, and why it has so a strong reputation. As with movies like Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House and M. Hulot's Holiday, it takes a topic with which everybody has experience -- including experiences that are bad at the time but are remembered almost fondly in later tellings -- and takes those problems to absurd proportions for comic effect. If the movie has one problem, beyond the suspension of disbelief required to accept so many disasters befalling the same two people, it's that John Candy's Del is the sort of character that a lot of people are going to have trouble sympathizing with, since despite his being well-meaning he can also be exceedingly obnoxious.

But don't let that put you off; Planes, Tranes, and Automobiles is a fine 90 minutes of laughs for the Thanksgiving holiday. Just be happy you're already home for the holiday.

Edited to add: in looking through the programming listings for the premium (cable, not streaming) movie channels, I see that Planes, Trains, and Automobiles has a couple of airings on Friday, first overnight on The Movie Channel Xtra, and then at 8:00 PM on Flix (if memory serves the two channels are part of the same package).