A couple months back I was spending some time with friends in Colorado and we were talking about movies. The movie Planes, Trains, & Automobiles came up and was instantly praised by most, if not all, as a “classic,” a “once in a lifetime woman movie.” I couldn’t help but chime in with my humble opinion that it was not good in the least. Immediately I was jumped upon and a heated discussion broke out.
The facts were these:
- I watched it, for the first time, on TV with some friends in high school
- I was not humored at all, in fact, found the characters very annoying and not grounded in the least
- I quite sufficiently enjoy What About Bob?
Now I don’t want to hold my views so tightly that I can’t recant my own thoughts and ideas. So to follow through I grabbed Planes, Trains, & Automobiles off the shelf of the local Blockbuster (vintage!) and decided to give it a go. I purposefully tried to clear my mind of any negative feelings I had to give it good chance. You know what? I semi-enjoyed it. Deep down in there are great performances from both Martin and Candy. But there are still detractors…
One of my big “No”s for the movie, in high school, was that I didn’t find it funny. If this is supposed to be a comedy why was I not laughing? I’m pretty easy to get to laugh, truly. I find most types of humor from sophomoric to pitch-black absolutely hilarious if not chuckle worthy— I still haven’t been able to kick the habit of courtesy laughing. With this second viewing I found myself laughing and many of the things said. Say what you will but Hughes can write some killer dialogue. That being said I think a real misstep is it being a John Hughes movie overall. I haven’t seen all of his movies but I’ve seen enough and read enough to be able to say that I think he was too close to the source material most of the time. When someone writes, directs and produces a movie they can be so caught up in the vision of what it is supposed to be that when an audience is brought in to really decide what it’s worth the results don’t match the vision. I think this is true for many of the music cues in the movie, like that great grab at pathos from Candy, the “You Wanna Hurt Me” speech, that is completely undermined by the 80’s sympathy music welling up underneath.
It’s not the music, I like most music from the 80s, especially from the underrated Better Off Dead. The acting in the scene is great. The editing makes it more dramatic so that sympathize with both Martin and Candy, no easy task. Overall it comes down to two things that I mentioned in the facts. First, I find it hard to sympathize with both characters as both protagonist and antagonist. It is very real according to life, yes. But it is taken to such great lengths for both Martin and Candy that I find it jostling to go back and forth. To carry this on to my next point, I think that What About Bob? does it better. Both have the main characters antagonizing each other (excellent performances all around from Martin & Candy and Dreyfuss & Murray), but Bob? has something PTA doesn’t and that is the excellent audience surrogate of Dr. Leo Marvin’s family. An audience surrogate can be a real game-changer look at Margaret Dumont in most of the Marx Brothers movies, and look at no one in particular in the TV show Stella. Ms. Dumont’s dry nature amplifies the reaction that we as an audience feel towards the absurdity happening on screen, just like the Marvins’ warm welcoming of Bob amplifies our reaction to all that Dr. Marvin and Bob do to each other.
The last point I’ll make is a simple one and I think is to blame for the unshakeable nature of my lack of affection for PTA. I did not see it as a kid. I didn’t see it until late high school. All of my friends who love it grew up watching it. I’ve come to realize that nostalgia is very important but not necessarily the most important thing. I think nostalgia is a major in an idea of being the first. For my friends, Planes, Trains, & Automobiles was the first time they’d seen the formula that later would make What About Bob? and, much later, Due Date. These “firsts” set the stage for what is next to come and give us presuppositions of what we want out of future experiences, movies included. That being said I won’t have my kids watch it until they’re much older. There’s to much language in there for me to choose PTA over Bob?. So guess I’ll perpetuate this view so that my kids and those of my friends can have this same argument for years to come. *sigh* future memories…
I’ll now address the movie directly: Planes, Trains & Automobiles, forgive me for my original misconceptions about your humor, you are definitely chuckle-inducing. I forgive you for your ill-advised music cues, trying to hammer home the way I’m supposed to be feeling during that scene. Thank you for those great performances from nearly everyone involved, especially Martin and Candy. I hope we can learn to be friends, but really I don’t want to invest the time to go much further than that.
Love,
Me
On This, Art, and the Other 