I'll preface my rambling by giving you a window into my personality: I'm not a huge fan of Thanksgiving. I usually refer to it as "a speedbump on the way to Christmas." Truth be told, I used to despise Thanksgiving. I didn't see the point of a holiday devoted to being a glutton and eating a lot of food I'm not nuts about. Not to mention the forced family time, crowded together in either a rarely-seen relative's house far from home or at my OWN house, where I manage to have 7 chairs for 10 guests. I also used to not understand what the big deal with turkey was. I only knew it as a dry bird, with the consistency of cardboard. That explained why people only ate it once a year.
But...
Recently I'm becoming a bit of a convert. I blame my wife for this, for making ALL my holidays enjoyable, from Christmas to Arbor Day to Boxing Day, eh. This year, I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving. And family crowds. And football and beer. And hanging Christmas lights when it's cold outside. I'm still a nerd for Christmas, don't get me wrong, but as far as the speedbump called Thanksgiving is concerned, this year I'm gonna slow down and take it in rather than just powering thru it to get to the chewy center called Christmas.
With that, I thought I'd do a review of the best Thanksgiving movie I could think of. Surprisingly, it took about 0.7 seconds to think of this movie. Granted, there are no actual Thanksgiving rituals involved in this film but the journey cross-country and the importance of being there for it make up for absolutely NO shots of cranberries. Which is fine with me. Cranberries suck. So here it is, one of the funniest movies of the 80's and unquestionably the best Thanksgiving movie...
PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES
Theatrical Release: Thanksgiving Day 1987... I didn't know that until just now.
Genre: Comedy
Sub-genre: 80's comedy... The good kind. A John Hughes movie. Not a ridiculous attempt at an 80's comedy like Mannequin or Dirty Dancing.
Starring: The comic genius pairing of Steve Martin and John Candy. Many other comic character actors make appearances (Michael McKean, Edie McClurg, and Kevin Bacon! Use this movie to make a connection!)
The overview: Steve Martin has to get home for Thanksgiving from New York to Chicago. The journey starts two days before the Thursday of and over the next 48 hours, every imaginable awful luck scenario prevents him from getting home by any mode of transportation. Yes, he can't get home by neither plane nor train nor automobile nor people train, which don't run outta Wichita. Less'n you're a hog or cattle. People train run outta Stubbville. God, I love this movie. Oh, and John Candy inserts himself in the travel debacle, first by coincidence, then kind of as a lonely annoyance.
I think a lot of movies are either amazing or awful based on one person: the director. The reason the first two AND the last two Batman movies were awesome, the directors (Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan, respectively). Nearly as important, is the producer. When Steven Spielberg produces or directs a movie, you get Schindler's List and not National Treasure, ya know what I mean? In the 80's there was John Hughes. He either produced or directed most of the best movies of the 80's and they all have a unique look and feel to them. The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Uncle Buck, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Weird Science, The Great Outdoors, Christmas Vacation, to name a few... They're undoubtedly midwestern, usually shot around Chicago, and string several hilarious scenarios together while still managing to advance a plot. Basically, John Hughes movies are a series of jokes that coincidentally is telling you a story. But in order to not get all snooty (Snooty? Snotty. Snotty? Snooty.) about it, I'll just leave it at that, rather than exploring his body of work. Let's just focus on why this is a great movie...
John Candy OR Steve Martin, as individuals, could carry a movie. But putting them both together gives you a comedic pairing unlike any since Laurel and Hardy or even, yes, Harold and Kumar (underrated). Martin plays Neil Page (marketing) and Candy plays Del Griffith (shower curtain ring sales) who find themselves forced together repeatedly during a helluva trip home for Thanks-giving. Shenanigans no doubt abound. The back and forth between Neil and Del is priceless, whether it's Neil telling Del why he's so annoying or the two of them riding in the back of a pickup for "no more than 45 miles, tops" in Kansas in late November when the temperature is 1. The best movies follow classic story archetypes and this one is my favorite, the Quest archetype. Neil HAS to get home for Thanksgiving, no matter the obstacles he encounters along his way. Be it not being able to get a cab in NYC at rush hour (I can't believe that asshole made him pay for the honor of taking the cab!), snow storms over O'Hare, trains breaking down (and leaving them to WALK a mile thru a harvested sugar beet field!), or cars catching fire after driving the wrong way down the interstate and scraping between two semi's! Neil's traveling companion is Del the over-friendly, bright-side-of-everything, shower curtain ring salesman. Del annoys Neil. Neil yells at Del. Del's feelings get hurt. Neil feels bad and continues to travel with Del because Del always knows a guy who's cousin bought some shower curtain rings in '83 and owes him a favor. Neil pays. Del finds the next mode of transportation to get them 45 miles closer to Chicago and when that breaks down, the next leg of their journey will still find them together, traveling in some unconventional way and having to deal with compassionate characters who seem more like movie characters than people you'd encounter in real life. There's no WAY a rental car agent is gonna tell you "You're fucked." But if I want people I'd encounter in real life, I'd watch a Coen brothers movie. Or actually go outside and interact with people. In real life. Ugh.
So why is this a good movie? Joke after joke, and my favorite part: a real sympathetic, identifiable story underneath. In this case, there are two stories. The obvious journey home but the last one is revealed just at the end, after Del and Neil part ways at the L station and after Neil comes back. It's a great story about friendship (corny but it is what it is). It teaches about the redeeming qualities of everyone. When you watch this movie, you find yourself going back and forth between saying to yourself "Well, Neil's being an asshole about it! Lighten up!" or "Del's got it coming. Let him sleep outside in the cold. He used Neil's credit card without telling him. Screw him!" Identifying with AND hating a character in the same story makes them complex and therefore, human. Because humans are nothing if not chock full of contradictions.
In closing, I insist you go to WalMart, Target, KMart, Suncoast, wherever your DVD store of choice may be, go there and purchase this movie. If you only watch it this one time every year, it'd be worth it. Start a new tradition on Thanksgiving, if you're not the football and beer kinda guy! It's a great film to have in your collection and you'll be able to trade the funniest lines with your friends and family for years to come.
Happy Thanksgiving, folks.
Best Scene: There are at least a dozen scenes or lines worth mentioning but if you haven't seen this movie, first of all, shame on you and shame on your parents. Second of all, you just have to watch it to appreciate the following...
Overall: 10 out of 10! I'm even overlooking the missing scenes from my shitty WalMart edition of the movie (vibrating can of beer spilling on the bed, old man eating on the plane) as well as something I never thought of but my wife pointed out -- you never see what's in Del's trunk. At first I thought this was an obvious oversight on the part of the director, since there's so much fodder for comic gold with what COULD be in Del Griffith's trunk. But the more I thought about it, it occurred to me that the trunk is simply a metaphor for Del. Large, cumbersome, in the way a lot, it's definitely seen it's share of the country. But it's still intact, still trudging along, filling it's intended purpose. And I notice that when times were at their most difficult in this film, you see Neil take the other side of the trunk. It's easier to get a trunk around if you have a friend help you. And learning what you do about Del in the end, it gives the whole movie a different perspective.
Who would enjoy this movie: Families. BUT... If you're watching this movie with kids under 14, herd them out of the room for the rental car return scene. Trust me. And you're welcome.
Watch it if you like: National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation; Strange Brew; Uncle Buck; The Great Outdoors; any John Candy movie, really. He's the greatest.
Next In My Netflix Q: Madagascar 2
**Thanks to Google, Wikipedia, and IMDb for various reference sources**
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