Publication Date: 11-28-2025

Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) review

Dir. John Hughes

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★½

It’s proven across multiple decades, with different actors, directors, settings, and more, there are two distinct elements that can serve as the basis for a successful comedy: a mismatched pair and Murphy’s Law.

John Hughes’ Planes, Trains and Automobiles takes the aforementioned formula, puts two contagiously funny and immensely gifted comic actors on the road, and lets some combination of rage, blunt force, situational absurdity, and heartfelt drama be their guiding zeal. The result is a timeless Thanksgiving classic you can revisit each and every year before or after your food coma, and still marvel at how a movie can make you laugh as hard as it did the first time you saw it.

Steve Martin’s Neal Page is a salesman eager to leave New York City to get home to his family in Chicago. It should be as simple as a flight from LaGuardia to O’Hare, but bad weather diverts his flight to Wichita, Kansas. Whilst on the plane, Neal is seated next to Del Griffith (John Candy), a man whose loquaciousness offsets his good-natured charm. He’s a shower curtain ring salesman of all people, so even his screeds about what he does for a living aren’t interesting. Del was also the man who inadvertently stole Neal’s cab on the way to the airport.

The two end up stranded overnight in Wichita, and now must find a way to get back up north to Chicago by the time Thanksgiving kicks off. This involves taking all modes of transportation, spending multiple nights in different cramped hotel rooms, putting up with the ornery staff at a rental car outlet, and trying not to let their opposite personalities drive one another to insanity.

Martin plays the anal Neal with all the intensity and restlessness the archetype demands. He always appears as if he’s on the cusp of losing it, only to grit his teeth and take a few deep breaths to recalibrate himself. When he does unleash on Candy’s Del, it’s the kind of piercing insults that cut deep, including that famous monologue in the (first) hotel-room where Neal tells him all the ways he’s a boring, incompetent buffoon only for Del to respond with the kind of self-assured, genuine spirit Neal wishes he harbored. That said, Martin succeeds at the toughest task: getting us to sympathize with someone who isn’t inherently a bad person, just victim to ill-timed and rampant unfair circumstance.

John Candy turns in one of the finest performances in his far too-short career, imbuing Del with a warmth despite his loneliness — the latter he disguises by talking too much. Candy is permitted to be ribald and expressive in ways that still come across as understated. He’s not a roly-poly presence who functions best being loud and obnoxious. In contrast, Candy’s personality explodes during the uproariously funny scene when, while driving, he jams out to Ray Charles’ “Mess Around,” pursing his lips to hold his cigarette while using his fingers to mimic a keyboard on the dash while steering with his knees. He’s a one-man symphony; an instant party-starter when given the runway (or, in this case, freeway) to utilize his talents at building comedic momentum.

Writer/director/producer John Hughes — in one of his first pivots away from kid/teen-centric comedy-dramas — allows Martin and Candy to embody their own personalities and best attributes. He is careful not to let neither settings nor situational humor absorb them to the point where crass set-pieces undermine their own talents. Instead, Hughes lets this magnetic dynamic carry the movie as it traverses a large stretch of land in a short amount of time. Cameos in the form of Kevin Bacon, Dylan Baker, Edie McClurg (as the hilarious car rental agent), and Ben Stein pepper the film with welcome diversions that ignite the spark of comedy, but don’t exist too long that the flame dies out.

There aren’t a great deal of staple Thanksgiving movies. Similar to the holiday itself becoming more underrated and smothered by the Christmas monster, Thanksgiving movies are tougher, I presume, because the day itself is one usually underscored by bliss: there’s no pressure to buy gifts, there’s great food to be eaten, and football can be utilized as a way to distract from the tension caused by extended family members. Planes, Trains and Automobiles sidesteps the family drama and gives us a stripped-down buddy comedy with two of the best comics of their era afforded a large canvas on which to do what they do best: make us laugh and get to the heart of the material.

Starring: Steve Martin, John Candy, Laila Robins, Michael McKean, Dylan Baker, Kevin Bacon, Edie McClurg, and Ben Stein. Directed by: John Hughes.