Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

       

Hughes, John. “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.” (1987)

Steve Martin (Neal Page) and John Candy (Del Griffin)

Talk about stranger danger! In this brief holiday classic, Neal Page (Steve Martin) is just trying to get home to Chicago to see his wife and kids in time for Thanksgiving, although this soon becomes a much more difficult task. As his misfortune continues, public transportation seems to fail him in great magnitudes and finds himself desperate just to find a place to stay for the night, he ends up having to follow a man that stole his taxi that same morning Neal is forced to bunk up with the extremely talkative Del Griffith (John Candy), whom he finds deathly annoying. Although the close bunking he shares with the man is not nearly the worse experience he would have in the following days. He goes through trials that comes with the insanity of the holiday season tied along to a man he can not stand, but while going through this process the two unlikely friends share a few laughs and stories. By the end of the film Neal is more than ever ready to go home, he gets on the train and starts his journey. He has no watch, no money, no phone, and most of the clothes off his back had disappeared, but realization soon hits him as he notices that Del was not actually going home. The irritating stranger he had come to know was not able to return home to a huge Thanksgiving feast, he had no one to share his joy of survival with. With this realization in mind Neal brings his new friend back to have a meal with his loving family.

The relationship that is shared between the two is immense, and this quickly became more than just two guys trying to make it back to Chicago, it is a heartfelt story  of sharing love and joy not only in the winter months, but all year round. If anything should be taken from this movie, it should be the fact that a person is not how they appear, there is more to everyone then what they show. In this case, the large taxi stealing, shower curtain rings selling man who seems very disorderly and messy, but he is actually just a poor lonely widow.