Season's Greetings 2023

 

365 Films in 365 Days: Trains, Planes and Automobiles

This series is dedicated to matching memorable movies with the signature day each year upon which I could watch them forever. Given that this post will be published 2 days before Thanksgiving this year, I give you…

Trains, Planes and Automobiles (1987, Paramount Pictures, John Hughes)

The film starts quietly enough, in a quiet board room, no music, and all painful stares. It's a bold way to start a comedy, which is intended to evoke laughter and noise. The scene is amusing, the way it's shot, but it mostly serves to set up the stakes: Martin's Neal aims to fly home for a family Thanksgiving in 2 days.

Thanksgiving is not as glamorous as Halloween or Christmas, between which it is sandwiched on the calendar. Other movies toy with the look and tropes of Thanksgiving, and while this one isn't specifically about the day or the tradition, it probably has the best message to share on the subject. And, I like to think, it manages to achieve a certain wistful charm related to the idea of Thanksgiving and being with family, even if one's family isn't the kind that would best be there to spend time with. It's a deft hand at play, and the film works better than you remember it does.

The "bad trip home" model the film follows is ruthless from the beginning. Neal pays $75 to lose a taxi cab, only to arrive at the airport and learn his flight is delayed. He has already struck out before the real plot begins, though he'll be up to the plate again many times before it's over. It's unironic how Neal's troubles begin with Candy's Del (i.e., tripping over his trunk while in a foot race with Kevin Bacon to a cab), and almost as if Del is some kind of "bad luck angel" sent to mildly torment his target (rather than gently support like Clarence does in It's a Wonderful Life) into becoming a better person.

On the first plane, Neal is confronted by being bumped from first class to coach in a middle seat, endless chatter and stinky feet (both Del's), and a wheezing cough from the passenger on his other side. Three strikes again!

By the way: How dare the movie have the title that it does and not offer up the vehicles displayed in the same order!

If the differences between Del and Neal weren't apparent, Del's choice in rides and dives drives the point home near to finality. It's classic blue collar vs white collar. But the movie never preaches one over the other, or seems to take sides. Neal is traveling through Del's worlds. Or is Del a satellite who can't help but orbit Neal's planet. Both moving through and past each other on mutually exclusive collision courses with life.

Both their reactions when they arrive at the shared motel room to find a single bed is ripe silver. And the shower bit when Neal finishes to find that only a single tiny towel remains for him to dry with is pure gold.

There's almost nothing funny about Neal's "have a point" tirade that he levels against Del after he goes through his sinus clearing routine in bed. And there's nothing funny about Del's quiet but devastated reaction to Neal, showing Candy's real depth as an actor. Comedy can cut to the quick. Sometimes it cuts too deep, too. We need to be reminded of that. Not everything is a joke, even if it might seem funny to pile on the "fat guy" (or gal). Thank you for that reminder, movie.

Del stands up for himself without malice, which is great. We are both Neal and Del at times, simultaneously overly critical and all too vulnerable to what the world throws at us.

"Those aren't pillows!" and the context behind those words is one of the best laughs in the film. It's ridiculous, but it works. And the way they shake it off after by jawing about "da Bears" is a nice chuckle to follow. (Funny, too, how men slamming into each other on a field is the cureall to the gay.)

"People train runs out of Stubbville." The Owen character is a full-on caricature, and I'm here for it.

Neal's gift of a train ticket to Del is sweet and mostly redeems their relationship to that point. Del's want is still written on Candy's face as the scene ends.

Del struggles as if his whole life is in that trunk as he drags it from the broken down train. Neal rebounds from his disappointment quickly and helps to take up Del's yoke.

The bus scene is probably the most over-the-top bit in the entire piece. Probably any or all of it has happened in real life, though.

One of the all-tie greats curse word scenes occurs when Neal reaches the Marathon rental car counter. I honestly cannot stand the way the woman is chatting and carrying on on the phone before this happens. It's a perfect send-up of those type situations.

"You play with your balls a lot." It's almost a throw-away line, and it's a cheap but decent laugh, but most of all it tells us how closely Del has been watching Neal. (Of course, it's been good, and he doesn't have gloves, so you can hardly blame Neal.) Even Neal's response to this might suggest he does play with his balls a lot. 

Poor Del's goofiness and nicety finally catch up with him in the car at night. The best physical bit of comedy is found here as Del straight-jackets himself to the driver seat.

The movie hits cartoon-levels of hijinks when Del skirts the car between two big rigs going the wrong way down the interstate. Skeleton heads and all. It's pretty awesome.

And then the car catches fire. The whole thing has such a naturally satisfying progression of bad to worse.

The drunk scene after when Neal calls Del into their second shared motel room together is so honest and well played by both.

I feel like Dumb and Dumber really took a page from this movie when it came to their respective state trooper scenes. I like both, but this came first.

I feel like that bluesy, down note, harmonica-based musical motif in the film went on to influence practically every comedy and buddy drama TV program that aired in the late 80s and 90s as a marquee "scene-transitioner."

The realization of Del's homelessness is so well handled. There were clues throughout. Neal's choice to go back and include Del is the film's Thanksgiving blessing. Leave no one alone who can you can afford to include. It's comedy with a heart, and those are often the best kind.

November 21 — 6 of 365 logged

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