Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Planes, Trains & Automobiles is an American comedy film produced by Paramount Pictures in 1987. It was written and directed by John Hughes and stars Steve Martin and John Candy. Laila Robins co-stars, and the film features cameos by Michael McKean, Kevin Bacon, Larry Hankin, and Matthew Lawrence. It is considered perhaps the best of John Candy's films.

Plot
Steve Martin plays the tightly wound Neal Page, a bundle-of-nerves straight man in the style of Bud Abbott. John Candy portrays the innocent but always skewered Del Griffith, a shower curtain ring salesman who seems to live in a world governed by a different set of rules, a la Lou Costello.

The film is jarred by a scene in which Steve Martin's character goes on an F-word tirade against a car rental agent, played by Edie McClurg. Some consider the scene especially funny; others consider it out of place in an otherwise warm, sweet film aimed at a family audience.

The movie follows the story of Neal Page as he tries to return to his family for Thanksgiving after being on a business trip. The journey is doomed from the outset, with Del Griffith interfering by snatching the taxi cab that Page had hailed for himself. The two inevitably pair up later and begin an absurdly error-prone adventure to help Page back to his home. When every mode of transit fails them, what should have been a brief New York to Chicago flight turns into a mishmash of cancelled, broken, and worthless trips in the wrong direction.

Response
The film was greeted with critical applause in 1987, a surprising revelation given the fact that at the time Steve Martin and John Candy were both known as low brow comedians and John Hughes was considered a teen angst filmmaker. Their attempts at producing an "adult" comedy resulted in one of the most highly regarded films of the decade. (It now has 97% positive ratings on RottenTomatos.com and is featured in Roger Ebert's Great Movies collection.) In 2000, readers of Total Film magazine voted it the 10th greatest comedy film of all time.

The film was released on DVD in 2000, and although there is supposedly a three-hour version of the film sitting in the Paramount Studios vault, the original theatrical version is featured on the DVD in a "bare bones" presentation. Unfortunately, a known deleted scene of Neal and Del eating airline food that is commonly seen on the version of the film edited for television is not on the disc either.

Trivia

 * This is said to be Steve Martin's favorite film of his own work, and was rumored to have been Candy's favorite, as well.

Tagline: ''What he really wanted was to spend Thanksgiving with his family. What he got was three days with the turkey.''